I finally got around to trying to google Doug White from the Supra days and although I couldn't find him, Dennis did using the Microsoft white pages. Only now do I get the irony of that. Anyway, he seems to have gone to EMI which got bought up by Credence. I fired off some email, we'll see if it's the right Doug and/or if he's still there. If he's not, I'll resort to the phone number Dennis got in his search.

The laptop is unhappy, explorer crashed on it (not IE but the whole GUI) and although it restarted, it's still not 100%. Probably need to reboot. I usually just suspend-resume for a few weeks but today I did an actual power up. The laptop has been off for almost 5 days now.... so of course it picks today to start acting up after I give it some time off.

Last night the woman made some tasty brisket stuff and I had the leftovers tonight. No veggies or fresh bread like last night, just some warmed meat and a power bar and diet root beer.

What else today? I was feeling pretty good, but my back is hurting now which is putting a damper on my good spirits. Other than that, life is pretty positive right now. Probably because Ed is out of town and I don't have to deal with any politics. With him out, my group just floats in a little void... yea, it's probably not good in reality but what can ya do.

I had to counsel Steve today. He's totally ruining his life so he can help his parents out. I don't think he signed up to be helping pay their bills due to their own bad choices. Poor guy.

Whoa, I just tried using smbmount to mount the laptop drive on pong and it worked. Freaky. Now I can rsync backups.

My, my, doesn't this look familiar? Wonder if I could get the woman to take up autocrossing? :) Pics from this weekend. Check out that skyline...

Since I've stopped German class, how long before I stop recording time in German and stop counting reps at the gym in German?

Saturday we went into the city and saw The Black Riders which is a freaky ass goth-like play. Apparently it's big news. We saw a pre-production version so there were a few bugs, but our tickets were only $50 for both. If we went in two weeks after the opening they would have been $250 or more... although it's already sold out for it's whole run. Nuts. It is very visually interesting, but a bit freaky. After that we went shoe shopping, she wanted to hit DSW which is a big ass shoe store up there. I doubted their prices would be good (it is SF after all) but the asic running shoes I got for $135 were only $119 there (in a different color but they seemed like the same thing). Interesting. Then we went for an early dinner. No where fancy, just some 50s themed diner. I got a grilled ham and cheese and a milk shake. :)

Sunday we went to the Toyota "Vehicular Dodge Ball" thing. It's one of those brand events where they let you beat the crap out of some cars to prove they're good and hip and all that. It was mostly auto-cross like skills that were needed, so I did pretty well. There was also a red light/green light drag racing type thing that I won... and the woman came in 2nd as the other fast guy screwed up and got disqualified. We came out of it with some prizes, we picked all DVDs. I got Caddy Shack for dad as he only has it on VHS, the woman got Ocean's Eleven because she's only got it on VHS, and I also picked up Training Day because I've not seen it. If it sucks, I can always trade it in with my books at the used bookstore. After that we ended up taking her books to the used book store up in El Cerrito (what a pit) and looking at some diesel VWs. I didn't know it but the GTI, the Jetta and the bug are all built on the same chassis. There was a Jetta parked next to a bug and sure enough, the wheelbase is exactly the same. The bug only looks small, it's actually pretty big. Anyway, I got rid of my diesel fetish now that I've looked at them. I can go back to obsessing about something else.

I also fixed the turn signal on dad's bike, it's back to 100% now. Whew.

I can't say Chris did it, but when I got the RT home last night I noticed that the turn signal was busted. Looks like a rock took the lens out... $22 at the dealer for a new one. Whew, I thought it was going to be $290 because I would have to replace the whole mirror/turn signal assembly (which is what happens if the bike falls over).

Last night was a scary ass ride up to Alameda, I almost died, twice. I hope we get stuff figured out and the woman moves in soon... this whole commute is killing me.... or really close to. That's not good.

The buyer for my old Suzuki FMF exhaust flaked on me, bummer. Gotta repost it. Or maybe I'll just sell it with the bike or something. Hate to go to eBay but that's the next step I suppose. Don't really look forward to boxing it up and shipping it somewhere, ya know.

The guys at the gun shop called their good (ie psycho) customers and let us in on a bulk ammo buy. 230gr .45 for $179 per 1000. Just over gun show price, but these are new instead of reloads. I don't really care if they're reloads or not as long as they're good. I'm not collecting the brass on these so as long as they work once, I'm good. I've gotta try out those 200gr rounds soon to make sure they're good to use in the upcoming class. I also signed up for the next, next refresher course in December. Eric & Elana (the couple I met last time) are signed up for both. I swear I'll make some friends yet, I just gotta work at it. They're both motorcycle nuts so maybe we can all go to the show in November.

Our new VP swapped bikes with me for the day, I'm trying out his Vrod and he's trying out the RT. Of course, since I'm riding dad's RT I really swapped a loaned bike for another loaned bike. Anyway, the Vrod is an experience. Not an easy bike to ride, but people seem to look at you a lot when you're on a Harley, even a funny looking one.

By riding out Skyline to 84 to the coast and then back up past Pescadero, and going to/from Alameda twice and to work today I've got 6054 miles on dad's bike, it's ready to service. Too bad the appointment isn't until the 7th.

I also forgot to mention that I got my shotgun back. Well, more accurately I got Vareck's shotgun back. I took that rusty POS in and had the barrel and tube refinished, had it ported, the chamber reworked and a custom length (to me) stock put on with a really top of the line recoil pad. It's now ready for me to use at the next shotgun class, whenever that it.

I took today off and am not making much of it. I've cleaned the bathroom and, uh, that's about it. My shoulder is really screwed up from yesterday, I spent about 3 hours polishing the Saab. Not waxing (although I eventually did that) but actually polishing it with this polishing compound. Damn that is work. It looks awesome though.

Saturday Don came up and we went to the gun show. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: This was the WORST gun show EVER!. Pure junk, about 40% smaller than last time (they cut off a big chunk of the room) and just as expensive. I managed to buy 3 cases of 200gr (not 230gr!) .45 at a good price which made up for $8 parking and $14 to get in (Kristen went and I had to pay for that of course). I'm never going to a CA gun show again. :(

Sunday was a lazy day (other than the car cleaning). We walked over to Starbucks and got coffee and "low fat orange loaf" and read the paper and didn't do much else. Kristen went home after a trip to Home Depot where we looked at carpet and tile. Today I'm supposed to measure the rooms to see how much it would actually cost to carpet, tile, etc the house. Ugh.

I've got dad's bike this week. He wants me to ride his to get it over 6k miles so he can have it serviced before our trip. I've only got 180 miles to go, so going for a ride today and commuting for the week should do it. He's going to need a rear tire, but it keeps denying it.

I sent in the DMV "statement of fact" form to try to get the DMV to stop bugging me about the old Ford pickup I sold last year. I sent in the top part of the pink slip when I sold it, but apparently they don't care and still want all sorts of back registration since I quit paying it last year. I now had to send in a form saying I really did send in the form, and that I really sold it and that it's really gone and the guy was from out of state (NV) and that's why he hasn't registered it with the CA DMV and to leave me the fuck alone. Damn bureaucrats. Why don't you get some 1998 technology and build a web page we can use to fill out forms and have them print them at your office if you can't deal with electronics... or maybe join the 80s and get a fax machine and stop relying on the UDP based postal service.

Our netapp rep just came by and gave me a $200 gift card to a bunch of restaurants that we like to go to. Nola's is the awesome place in Palo Alto with the marinated skirt steak. Dinner for 4 with some drinks is around $80 so this is good for a couple of nights out. Awesome. My boss didn't take care of me for the move, but the vendors did. Glad to see someone cares. :)

I'm going for a ride at lunchtime today. So far, none of the guys on the motorcycle list at work are interested, which is fine, I'll probably stop by the BMW dealership to check on tires while I'm out if I'm alone.

Good ride in this morning, traffic wasn't that bad past the bridges and only got crappy about 3 miles from my exit.

I've done some good today. First, I got the new India boxes going; I pushed and did all the grunt work myself (un-boxing, racking, etc) and just had my guys do the 'smart' stuff. I just felt like moving things around. Second, I officially quit my German class. I'm not going any time soon and I'm not putting in the effort I should so it's gone. I'll try Spanish next as we're going there before I'll end up in Germany again. Hopefully when the next Europe trip comes up (that isn't Spain) I can pick it back up again. Spanish should be easier, it's everywhere. Even the gas station by my house is in Spanish (the advertisements on the pumps and whatnot), and there are no less than 4 Spanish channels on TV. It's got to be easier, dammit.

I put my resume into Google, they had my job open over there so I thought I should apply. Now I can bitch about hiring managers not responding to my resume instead of being that guy that people are bitching about.

Kahn (one of the web weenies) let me ride his Ducati 620 today. It was pretty nice, small, nimble, a great "city" bike. I thought the bars were a little uncomfortable and he said that he's already got an appointment on Thursday to have them swap the touring bars on it which raise them up 2" and move them back so you ride more upright. Damn, that will be nice, I'll have to ride it again after that. Not that I'm really looking for a(another) new bike, I'm just exploring options and experiencing things. Especially free things.

Dad stopped by for a tour of the data center and for lunch. He's working out of the new Stockton office the rest of this week (actually staying in a hotel out there) and for the two weeks after that. He's not happy, but does realize that if/when the house is built in Pioneer he can commute down (about 45 minutes) so perhaps he can move up even before he retires. Mom is done at the hospital and gets her retirement stuff next year so she's ready to go.

I'm always sorta sketchy on when the whole divorce thing happened, but I found the paperwork over the weekend while sorting junk. Here are the official dates:

Married 12/3/95
Separated 9/2/97
Divorce papers filed 10/7/97
Granted by the court 1/7/98

Took Kristen to the range last night and let her try out the Browning .22 for a bit. She did well, followed all the rules, etc. I don't think it was that much fun for her, but it wasn't necessarily about fun, but rather her getting over her fear. Seems to me that shooting is sorta boring if all you do is stand there and blast at a target. I fired about 25 rounds out of the .45 myself and called it good. I just wasn't up to it. I've got a psycho class coming up in October and odds are I won't shoot before then.

I finally got off my ass and posted an add to try to sell that FMF exhaust that's been sitting in the garage. I started with craigslist, then maybe I'll do eBay. I would probably have to reactivate my paypal account or some such if I use them, that seems to be the popular way to go now.

I fixed the upstairs toilet tank, the bolts rusted through just like they did in the guest bathroom 6 months ago. I've drained the downstairs tank and once the rest of the water evaporates I'll do those too. I figure it's about due. Seems like a really strange design using steel bolts to hold water in. Brass (the replacements) are better, but why not use some sort of plastic? Better yet, why not anchor the tank externally and not pass through the water? Dunno.

I finally got some shopping done as well. I got some new running shoes as my old ones are shot and are killing my knees. You're supposed to change shoes every 6 months or 300 miles. I only run 6 miles a week to/from the gym... so I should be good for almost a year of mileage. These new ones have some sort of slow breakdown gel stuff to make them last longer. They're also well vented, too bad they're so freakin' ugly. I couldn't get the Nike ones as they were butt ass stupid looking. Only some sort of freaky poser wanna be jock would wear those, they're too wacky for actual use. At Macy's I got 4 new shirts to wear with my light cargo pants. I looked in my closet and found that I don't actually own any Dockers anymore. Wonder where they went?

I got my resume finished up, time to post it on hotjobs or whatever and see what happens. Man, I don't like the fact that our VP is gone and my boss has said he "doesn't care anymore" and will probably be gone in 3 months. Bummer. :(

Took the day off today to make up for working last weekend. Ed doesn't care, he's got his own issues to deal with now that Joe is gone. Wednesday night I went to Joe's house for a going away thing; it was very strange. I don't seem to dislike the guy so much now that I don't work for him.

Pong is up in the attic now, we'll have to see how it works out. I'll monitor the drive heat and see if it gets too warm. I've added a small snail-shell style blower to the whole thing so it's noisier now, but since it's not in any room you can't actually hear it. Smartctl shows the drive is at 30C right now, with it's max recorded value ever of 52C (when it was in the TV cabinet).

Pictures of the move are up on main page. And this guy with his eyes closed is one of NVDA's founders. He stood to close to the action and I made him help out. Oddly enough, he's the guy that's filling in as VP of IT while they search for a new one.

The "pong in the attic" project lasted a few hours, then it died. It didn't seem that hot up there but something killed it. Now we're going with the "pong in the spare upstairs bathroom" project until I get something to build a shelf for it in the garage.

I've got this ancient laptop, a P5/75 running Win95 (which looks just like my desktop!) that must have been stolen from Supra I'm guessing? Anyway, I fired it up and it still works, still has old quicken info (now toasted), a bunch of old work docs (again, blasted those) and oddly enough homework from The Evil One's English class. I took perverse pleasure in deleting those files. :) I'll dust it off and clean the case up and put it in the pile of stuff to go to goodwill. Someone might want it. It works, and has and old, old copy of Word and Excel on it.

The office is completely clean. I've tossed out two book cases and a whole bunch of junk and now I'm down to one large book case, my desk and filing cabinet and that's it (well, the chair stays too). It's looking kinda large in here without all that paperwork on the floor.

Kristen sent some email, her dad lost his job today. His insurance company was bought by some other insurance company and they axed all the people in the office here except for some HR drones to do the cleanup. They're redirecting all the employees email to HR which is how she found out. She sent her dad email this morning and some drone said he was gone along with everyone else and not to email anything personal as it's being read by everyone. Oh.

Starting to feel normal again. I managed 8 hours of sleep last night and a trip to the gym which helped a lot. If all goes well tonight I'll be back to 100% by Wednesday.

Kristen is coming down on Wednesday night and bringing a bunch of stuff, she's going to try staying with me a few nights a week and getting a feel for the commute. It's going to suck, I know that already, but I'm going to let her figure it out for herself. Over the weekend her mom was visiting and they stopped by my place and checked it out. Her mom was relieved, she had heard that the south bay was so bad but surprisingly my place isn't in the 'hood and there aren't crack whores walking the streets or anything.

Our Sun SE dude went to see Raiders on the big screen on Sunday night. I gotta find out where that is!

Work is much easier when you only have to be there for 9 hours instead of 16.

Day 3 of the move into data center E. I'm running on no sleep, but will survive. Took lots of pics of the physical move, so that should be interesting to look at.

Also of note this week, our VP got fired (well, forced to resign, I don't think they actually fire VPs). The department has been in turmoil as the web dudes and programmers scramble to hold on to their crumbling little empires. I have a one on one with our CFO on Monday to talk about the whole thing. He wants input from all the directors and managers. Should be interesting.

Busy weekend. Friday night my parents took Kristen (and me) out to dinner for her birthday. I can't spell the name of the place, it's some quasi-fancy French restaurant in Fremont with awesome food. Next time I bag on the French for being generally useless, remind me of the food, and maybe the bread.

I left work early on Friday too to go get her gift. She's got this dorky DKNY watch with no number and no hash marks on it and it's so strangely shaped that you can't tell what time it is unless it's 12,3,6 or 9. Stupid. So I got her a similar watch (although it was some other designer who's name escapes me at the moment) that's a little cleaner looking and has some numbers and hash marks on it. She seemed to like it.

Saturday was Kristen's birthday BBQ and we woke up early to prepare the food. I cut up 8 complete chicken breasts (doubles) and 4 huge ass tri-tip steaks and turned them into 80 kabobs. We also had to run to Chinatown to pick up the cake and to the store for misc crap she forgot to get Friday. Don showed up around 3pm and we chatted while I grilled up the kabobs and the party was really going around 6pm. I've got some photos, but they're all just crapola and pics of her friends so they're not all that interesting. I'll put them up tonight perhaps.

Sunday was our 6th month anniversary. Fortunately, I remembered. :)

Today I'm going to the BMW drive event around 2pm. I'm signed up to drive a manual 545i and a manual X3. I might bail out early on the X3, I don't really want to know how their little SUV drives, I only picked it as my 2nd car because they wanted you to pick 2 and it was the only other manual available. A Z4 would have been cool too but they only had the autos (knowing only old farts and chicks will drive them).