Mission accomplished. I went to the mall with the intent of getting 3 shirts and a belt. After 2.5 hours I came away with 3 shirts (admittedly two are the same just different colors) and a belt that looks surprisingly like a new version of my old one (same style). Not too painful but it took so much longer than I thought it would. It's still easier when I take a girl along, they seem to find stuff so much faster.

I got a 4-wire to 6-wire firewire cable and tried it instead of the USB 1.0 (I'm guessing) connector I was using to talk to this external drive. The copy went from hours to just 3 or so minutes. That's more like it.

Last night was I think the 3rd time I've had earthquake dreams in the last week. Basically I'm somewhere and there is an earthquake. I think last night I was just at home, but not the home in Milpitas. Somewhere one story.... I can't recall. Anyway.

I got my main visa bill tonight as well as my bank statement and went to work and quickly got it all put into quicken and filed away. It's official, the rental car for the 4 days in Norway was more than the hotel room at Aud's place. Damn, they weren't kidding about cars being expensive. It was so worth it though, I liked the freedom of being able to drive around and see stuff. It wasn't Europey enough to want to take the train. Although I don't like the checks I have to write to pay them off, I do like seeing the bill with all the different countries and currency on them. One last straggler came in from Rothenburg (a restaurant called "Roma" and I did eat there and I did spend 10 euros so it's a legit charge). I feel like such a world traveler.

Well bummer, we didn't make it to Crater Lake as we had hoped. First, going on Hwy 1 is slower than I thought. Second, having a Harley along makes it way slower than I thought. Third, when the Harley crashes it tends to stop the trip. :( Yea, Bob got a little crazy on his hog and biffed it in a turn. The damage wasn't that bad but when the bike hit the ground it bent the handlebar down which pinched/shorted out the wiring and blowing a couple of fuses. Here is the amazing part though. Two other Harley types (husband & wife) stop to help. They live in the area and go back to get tools and a truck (in case we can't get it running again). They come back complete with cold beverages and help us re-wire the toasted electrical parts then take us back to their house where we can use the shop to bend the bars back (heated with a torch, which I had a photo but I was out getting a hotel room while they were doing that) and do a better hack job on the electrical. After all that they wouldn't even accept dinner as paytment. They were hicks and Harley types but still good people when their own are in trouble.

There were two other crashes we saw the results of over the weekend (both Harley... see a trend?). One was a guy missed a turn and went off an embankment on a switchback. He was fine but the bike was down in a ditch and no one knew how to get it out. The other was a big ass road-king (we saw it's smashed corpse being lifted by a wrecker, didn't see the rider) that appeared to have drifted left of center in a long sweeper and smacked into a C-class Mercedes (that was also being hauled onto a wrecker). Tough weekend.

The pictures are up but aren't that good. The first two are sorta interesting though (even if washed out). It's the back side of the Richmond/San Rafel bridge toll plaza where we stopped and waited for Thor who was meeting us there (and just suiting up on the other side of the plaza). The second to last shot is an example of a warranty voiding repair. The ignition fuses were toast so we sorta bypassed them... best we could do at the time. The BMWs were chawked full of spare fuses and fuse pullers but they are the full-sized automotive fuses and you can see the ones we needed were the little bike fuses.

Today was pretty calm compared to the rest of the week. I got Ed to go to Fry's and get me a USB hard drive so I can backup my laptop. The desktop guys wouldn't give me one so I just went around them. I hate the fact that they'll give the sales droids any laptop they want, or replace crack-berries that marketing droids wives destroyed because they were using them in a restaurant, etc but when I ask for something it's always denied. I've used the same PC for 4+ years and asked for no upgrades, no nothing but I ask for a $100 drive to backup my laptop (stolen back from the guy I fired no less, it's not like they gave me one) and nope. Bastard. Since Ed was buying I went all out and got the 230gb version instead of the 80gb one I was going to get. Ha. I'll probably have it for a 100 years though so getting the good one is worth it.

I was happily processing email and the virus scanner pops up and says that I've got the blaster worm thingy. I took a chance and installed SP4 and the virus patches and it seems to have not screwed up anything. I was sure that it would toast my network of something but nope. What's kinda lame is that the desktop guys gave us CDs with the sp installer and patches but you still have to actually download the SP data files from the net. Sure, the installer does it but why not just put them on the CD so you don't have to deal with the download time?

Valerie sent some email tonight. She went out with her friends from Polaroid and then went out with some friends from her singing group. Apparently it all involved a lot of drinking and she was feeling like chatting. She lasted about 3 email exchanges and then vanished. Bet she fell asleep. :)

Good day today, made out of a bad day. The guys in Germany were cranky because we had to shut down a server from 1am to 6am and of course that's the middle of their day. I responded to their email, in German. That was fun, but a lot of work. It's hard to talk about tech crap in another language. Plus I had to use the 'formal' past tense and subordinating conjunctions at the same time. That's hard without an example to follow.

In the afternoon I went over to mediaQ, the company we bought, and talked to their IT guy and engineers. They're all pretty good people and unlike the 3dfx guys they actually want to be part of NVDA and are happy to change their processes (for the most part). It will make the move a lot easier.

Valerie is flipping out even more than she was yesterday. Before she was confused, now she's moving into the mad phase. Well, I sorta knew that honesty had no place in relationships but I just keep going there. Not a good thing. Oh well.

So Val isn't coming to visit anymore as suspected. But what's more important is that Temptation Island 3 Starts August 28th!!!! (You may recall that Krista and I bonded over TI2 so it has a special place for me... I'll watch TI3 alone but will remember her).

Crap. I was messing with my anti hacker script and finally did what I was always afraid to do... I locked out the IP of the NVDA gateway so I couldn't get to the box myself. Oops. Had to go into the server room and work on the console. I still can't figure out why my script malfunctioned, but I did find out that I'm doing double checks that aren't needed. First I check to make sure it's not a foo21 login before I put it into the 'hackers' list and then later when I re-read the hackers list to block the IPs I again make sure that the login wasn't a foo21 login. Well of course it's not, if it was it wouldn't have made it into the list to begin with.

Oh, and the Montero is due for an oil change, it's been 4500 miles. I thought it seemed like it was going too long. Gotta check the math on the oil chart more often.

I just complicated things, a lot. Valerie was planning to make a trip out here to see me but wanted to make sure Sue was OK with it. I told her that I had kissed Sue before. So basically I've made out with two friends... and everyone seems to think that Sue has a secret thing for me (which is irrelevant as I have no similar thing for her). That throws a moral wrench into the situation. Life is interesting at least. For once I'm not the one getting picked over having some woman use me and some other guys and keep it all secret. I'm doing strange stuff but out in the open; makes people really put their morals forward. But whatever, it's late and I want to go home.

Saw Chris Isaak in concert last night at the mountain winery complements of Leianne and her work. It was an 11-99 "thank you" event put on by the CHP for all the big wheels that give them money. Dinner was actually pretty good and the show was fun. I was expecting more chickage and while there were a lot of "women" there they weren't cute. I counted 2 that were cute enough to note. I guess that's not bad.

Today I got up, packing my hiking gear on the bike, rode to Alice's for breakfast then rode back to Hwy 236 up to Big Basin and went hiking for a couple of hours. I then rode back down the mountain, got a Jamba Juice and am now back at home wasting time and not doing what I should be doing which is actually coming up with a workout schedule... I've not had one in almost a year. I currently just use memory to keep track of what I've done at the gym and what I've not done. That doesn't work, I'm always forgetting stuff and having to guess (and usually too low) on the weight I should use. I've got my old spreadsheets to look at, it shouldn't be that hard.

Pictures are up.

What a crazy week. Normally when things get busy at work there is still time to write in the journal and generally fiddle around with pictures and stuff but this week no such luck. It's been solid work, meetings, etc. Not even any time wasting vendor lunches. Only Friday did things actually blow up and get all nasty/stupid. I wrote this document detailing out the way that the perforce server (source code control stuff) worked and how a user could kill the server (and how to NOT kill the server), what we were doing to improve things, etc, etc. I went through 3 rounds of editing with several key engineers and then sent it out to the perforce users (1093 of them). Gopal (the really cranky senior VP that I clash with every time I come in contact with him) wrote back to Joe (my VP) a major flame-o-gram over the document. He actually said:

I'm trying to tape out this little chip, perhaps you've heard of it. It's called NV40. Tell me how the fuck I'm supposed to use this information to get this chip done? You offer explanations....."

Yea, he actually said that. He doesn't normally use profanity nor does it use the smart ass sort of tone (I didn't think his command of English was good enough for that, personally). Anyway, rather than get pissed (OK, I got a little pissed) I just chilled because it wasn't directed to me, it was directed to Joe. Hours passed and Joe didn't say squat so I drafted up a really nice reply and sent it back to the list Gopal had flamed. One of the software directors jumped in and backed me both times and 5 hours later Joe replied and said "My views are in line with Kelly's". Great, thanks. "in line"? Since when did the document reflect my views? It was the consensus of everyone involved, I just wrote it up. Oh well. To cheer me up Nick sent me this little game where you have a crash dummy a truck and a few ramps and you try to crash the truck into the wall and inflict the most damage to the dummy. It's simple, but really funny. Ed came over all pissed about something and I showed it to him and he took a copy and it entertained him for the rest of the day.

That big explosion was all on Friday. Friday night I went out with Jill for dinner. It was strange. We ate and then she cut the evening short saying she was tired. OK. Normally she drives me to my vehicle after I walk her to her car but she didn't, she just kissed me a couple of times and left. Whatever. Then she calls me from the road and we end up talking for 1.5 hours (we both got home and she was in bed talking to me). What's up? She wants to talk but not in person? She kept touching me (hand on back, holding hands, kissing at crosswalks, etc) while we were walking around downtown PA so I think she likes me (physically) but then she runs off. I'm actually not upset by her strange behavior, just confused.

Today I woke up at 6:00am, went back to sleep and got up at 9am to watch MST3k for about an hour (and I read some magazines during the show too). Around 11 I went for a ride and somehow ended up on Hwy 9. I was way, way too confident. I was doing crazy passing again and really upset some old hag I blew by at a whopping 37 mph. She seemed to think 20 in a 35 zone was just fine so I zipped around her. She honked and started swerving around and crap behind me but I just blasted around the next vehicle and headed up the mountain all by myself. Drivers in the US really do suck and they're so greedy. They'll never let anyone go by, then act like they're king of the road. I'm used to the fast lane hogs but they're easy enough to blow around but it would be nice if people used turnouts and whatnot in the mountains.

I'm also cleaning bathrooms (slowly), doing laundry, unpacking my crap from the trip, and playing with my German CDs (the exercises are sorta fun but I gotta learn to memorize things). I'm going to that concert with Leianne tonight and they're serving dinner with the show so it's probably not some crappy production. I gotta dress up though and I'm never happy about that.

While talking to Sue about her upcoming (pending) move to Oregon I learned something really important about myself and goals and motivations. I think the way a lot of people structure their lives is that they come up with a goal, figure out what steps are needed to do that goal and then do those steps. When they're done, they have the goal. Works the same at work too. So what I'm finding about myself is that I don't set a goal, I just pick steps that are generally "good" and do them. However, when I'm done I don't have anything other than a list of "good" things done that don't lead up to anything. I went to college with no real goal, got a job with no real goal, etc. Now, each of the individual steps have proven to be good, but they don't equal anything. The financial people ask what I'm saving money for. I don't have an answer. I don't want anything, there is no real goal. I just know that saving is good and that if I ever figured out what I wanted I would be ready. Still, that's not a goal. I have no goals other than ultra short range goals (like laundry). I want to learn German, but struggle with it every day because I don't have a goal with it (and I can't hear for shit anymore). I get upset when I don't do homework or make it to class or what have you but in the end, I don't have any goals so how can I ever succeed? I can just feel bad for the failure of the steps but really the steps could be useless and not worth the effort because they don't go anywhere. It's hard to write this out as just a stream of thought and have it make any sense.

I'm supposed to be going to dinner with Jill tonight but she's still working (and so am I). Humph.

The facilities department here is dumb. Period. They've "upgraded" all of the little closed signs they use to show the bathrooms are being cleaned. They used to be in English and Spanish. Now they're in English, Spanish, German and Italian (I think it's Italian anyway). Hello, 90% of the people that work here are Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, etc. Why not have fun and buy the signs in the languages people actually use?

Slow relaxing day.... man I need to get back to work! Anyway, I went to the gym and did a 1/2 workout just to remind my body what it's like, and then proceeded to fiddle around. I finally got some light bulbs for the hallway lights and the front porch. The hallway still had 2 lights working but the front porch had 0 so it was time to do something. Now the porch is at 50% functional and the hallway is at 100%. I also got some closeout sale compact fluorescent bulbs (they were only $2.67/each) and filled the empty sockets in the garage door opener. Nifty.

I talked to Leianne today and she's in a turbo bad mood, been that way for over a week now. Since she's a girl she's easy to cheer up, I took her some flowers on my way to Home Depot and suddenly she's not so crabby. Now maybe I can tell her my Norway stories and she'll listen. :)

Tonight I'm going to do dinner with Sue to catch up on her possible move to Oregon. It was a sure thing last week but now it's back to "up in the air". That girl has got some serious stress going on. If she moves she can't sell her house here or she'll loose $50k or so on it. Tomorrow night I'm going to dinner with Jill, Thursday is my class and Friday I'm going out with Jill again. Saturday I'm supposed to do another boat people thing with Leianne. Busy social life, how so not me.

I've returned. Pictures are uploading... slowly. I used dad's 3 megapixel camera so the images should look good.

This morning started out sorta crappy. At 9am it was time to take the perforce server down for the memory upgrade (a big deal, I've been coordinating it for a few weeks now) and my handy perforce admin doesn't actually show up. I grab a screwdriver and do it myself and he shows up about half way through. He 'forgot'. This server is his whole reason for being employed and he forgot. Dumbass. I had a chat with him about it later on and on Ed's advice I'm going to "write him up". Now none of us really know what the hell that means since we've never done it before but I'll ask HR. Sounds so juvenile. However, it starts to build a case against him which will make firing him later on that much easier. Wait, did I say that? Am I plotting against my worst performer? Na, I wouldn't do that.

The day ended well though (not counting helping Jo pick up a steamer trunk from Pier 1 or talking to Jill for a bit), I sold the damn truck. It's gone, history, no more. Whew. The guy was from Vegas of all places and he had a little weaselly guy with him. When it came time to hand over the money the weaselly guy came over and started to throw down $100 bills. The guy signing the papers never touched the money. Strange, but pretty cool at the same time. I stashed the cash in the safe, I had to replenish my stockpile of cash since depleting a lot of it to buy all those guns off Vareck way back when.

Oh, and the dreams from last night were again strange. I can't remember anything of the dream, all I know is that in the middle of a scene, the guy talking stops, turns to me (I was a 3rd party observer at this point) and he says "Look Up!" loudly. I wake up instantly and see that it's 4:45am. I look up and see nothing but was totally freaked out. I'm tired of dreams now, I just want to sleep.

Both my laptop and main system desktops are starting to get really cluttered. I'm turning into a mac user, I've got icons on the desktop that crawl half way across the screen. Or had icons that did that, I just cleaned the laptop and just have two rows now, and the first is crap I don't want on the desktop. Like what is it with IE having it's main program binary stored on the desktop? Why is that needed? Dunno, but blasting it just took out my browser.... but restarting IE from the tray seems to have brought it back to running again. Strange.

Last night was the second night in a row I had the same theme running through my dreams. I can't remember the exact details, but all dreams seem to center around being chased, and then me not being able to kill whatever it is I end up fighting with. It used to be that I would have these dreams and my guns wouldn't work, or weren't strong enough or what have you. Now it's all been hand-to-hand combat. In one I was trying to beat my cousin to death (he's already dead in real life, killed in a motorcycle accident of all things) but I don't know why. The one last night I was being chased by a bad guy that seemed to be out of the Tomb Raider movie, but wasn't really, but in the end we were fighting in a lab and I was using large pencils to stab him (like 3' long pencils). I woke up in the middle of the fight. I have no idea what it means but I'm not waking up in the best of moods since I'm not sleeping well. It probably didn't help that I fell asleep in the chair in the living room and only wandered up to bed at 1:30am. Old people fall asleep in chairs. Ugh. Guess that's getting to be me.

On a happier topic though, yesterday's "outing" (they're not dates, if they were we would have to follow different rules) went pretty well. We hit balls at the driving range, went to take care of the dog she's taking care of while the owner is away and then went and saw Laura Croft whack some people. After that we went and grabbed some burritos and came back to walk the dog, watch TV and eat. At some point we started fooling around which was fun (she has a really nice butt, BTW) and at 11pm I left. I won't see her now until after I get back from Norway. She seems to dig me, but I still can't figure out why with the kid thing such a major looming problem. I'm also thinking she's not into hiking. That kinda sucks.

Today I want to go get my book selection for the trip, run laundry (there is a ton), finish the books out for last month and then start packing. I chose not to go on the BMW club ride. It's an 8-hour ride today and I've got things I want to get done today. I'll still go for a ride this afternoon though, the bike is just shy of 4k miles and I want to reach that before I go (no idea why).

Something is up, fighter aircraft are flying really low around the south bay (rattling windows and whatnot in the complex). I don't think they're local, they seem to be equipped with drop tanks.... those look too big to be any sort of ordinance.

Is it just me or is Kenny's blog thingy broken more than it's working? Seems to be a pretty dodgy piece of software.

I got my books for the trip, and did serious laundry (everything is now clean), and went to the grocery store and got some essentials. I also wasted a bunch of time watching a show about Mars exploration in TLC. That stuff is addictive. Quicken is all up to date as well. Talked to mom for about 6 minutes (that's a lot, she seems to hate the phone more than I do). My suit is out and looks to be in OK shape and as long as I didn't just ruin the shirt by trying to wash it I should be ready to go for Wednesday. Val is on her way home from her parents and will give me a call when she gets home (in theory anyway, she's about as reliable as blog).

August in German is "August"?

They finished with the Montero hitch system thingy. I need to get the springs changed out now to deal with the weight but otherwise it looks pretty good and it comes off there pretty easily, I can do it myself.

If all goes even 1/2 right, it should be a good weekend. Since they're doing the big BBQ at work I'm going to leave here and go home (why hang out with a bunch of people and their stupid kids?). I'm going to pick up a through-the-glass style antenna for the satellite radio and get that wired in (I don't like the little turd on the roof, the wire is too exposed). Tomorrow I'm going to the driving range with Jill, then we're going to see the new Laura Croft movie. Should be fun. Sunday is the BMW club ride and at some point I need to get my suit out of the closet and get packed for Norway. I also have to pick up some crapola from Jo (wine rack for dad, laptop bag for Sue, etc). Oh, and I want to hit the bookstore too. There are 3 books left in that crappy series I'm reading and for some reason I feel I just must read them. No one will know me in Norway so who cares if they see me reading crap fiction. :)

I got home around 4pm, watched some TV and relaxed and then washed the Montero. I did stop by Best Buy on the way home and got a through-the-glass mount XM antenna as planned, but it's really complicated to install. I thought I could use the wire the installer ran and just cut the old antenna off and put the new one on but this one requires power too. Damn, so I have to re-run everything and find a place to tap into the power. What I can't (really) figure out is do they really want direct connect to the battery all the time. I can see for install, but it says to keep it that way.... all the time or not? Seems odd that you would keep the antenna powered all the time. Maybe Kenny can explain.

I went for a random ride and there was a guy on a Super-Hawk broken down on the other side of 237. I swung around at Zanker road and came back and checked on him. His alternator was toast and he was running on just the battery trying to make it home and he didn't. He had someone coming to recharge the battery so I left him there. He was very grateful. I felt good, even if I couldn't really help.

I'm thinking of doing a breakfast run to Alice's in the morning. I'll fire some mail off to Rod and see if he's up for going along, otherwise it's just me and the RT. Sounds like a country song.