Vareck continues to travel around with his (now) girlfriend. He's supposed to come back on April 6th but it's unclear at this time. There have got to be a bunch of interesting pictures and stories out of this trip.

Today was very productive. We got up and Krista made French toast which was tasty. My dad came over and we finished the lighting in the garage and while I washed and waxed the Montero Krista went for a ride. Dad came back over with the trailer and we mounted the front wheel holder thingies and made sure the bikes fit. We were finishing up when Krista called.... she had run out of gas (I warned her about that). Getting ready to go rescue her she called and said that she had the fuel switch in the wrong place and in fact the reserve did work so she made it home. She crashed (on the left side this time) at some point during her ride. Again, she was stopped when it happened. She's dangerous if she stops. Here are some pictures of dad working on the lights, and the trailer and stuff.

We also went down to Longs to pick up prescriptions and to get easter crap. Krista loves easter for some reason so I got junk to make her a basket and color eggs. I don't get it but at least it's a cheap holiday. I got myself one of those dark chocolate orange thingies (that comes apart in slices). I normally don't like dark chocolate but these things are good.

Last night I went to the book store and got Against the Giants, Decent into the Depths of the Earth, Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain. All that are left to get are Temple of Elemental Evil and Queen of the Demonweb Pits which they didn't have or I would have picked up. Time for them to crank out some more books, I'll be done with these in no time.

Only 200 or so hacking attempts have been made against pong in the last few weeks. That's not much considering there were 1100 in the first two weeks of me tracking them. Maybe the black hole route trick is really working and that a lot of those hacker IPs were repeat offenders trying every new exploit against pong? Dunno.

It turns out Don was lying. He wasn't coming up here on business, he was coming up here to pick up his Sig .308 rifle. It's a really nice toy with a good trigger and interchangeable barrels. You can swap it from .25-06 to .243 to .308 to .30-06 (and a couple of others). He got a cheesy-ass scope though, but at least it's mil-dot. I'm sure he'll upgrade at some point... then again he might be like me and not upgrade anything ever because you just can't be bothered. There is probably a lesson in there somewhere (do it right the first time). We compared his scope vs. my scope in low light conditions (sighting out my bedroom window into the back of the old Sun buildings) and there really was a difference between the clarity and light gathering of the two. Glad to see there was something that we could use to tell the difference other than his being 3-9x and mine being 6-24x.

Right now we're trying to find a backup tape from 1996 for some crap relating to NV3 and a law suit. Stupid lawyers.

Krista brought another load of clothes over (she can only carry like 3 shirts at a time in her tiny car) and is looking more fashionable every day. I really don't like those fashionable clothes.

Vareck is alive, we got email from him sometime today. Since I don't horde old email like he does, I'm going to cut and paste it here so I've got a record of it in the future when I get to reading these journals again.

Hola amigos :-)

I'm sorry I haven't checked in for some time, it's been an eventful week+. Roser and I are getting along very well. I am having a great time and have to say it's very cool traveling with someone who freely can switch between Catalan, English, Spanish, Italian, French, German and so on.

I'm in Athens, Greece, right now and Roser and I are looking at taking a trip this evening to Cairo, Egypt. I should be back in Barcelona on the 31st but I'm not sure yet when I'll return to the United States.

I have acquired a number of new stamps on my passport..

Athens isn't exactly what we thought it would be (neither of us had been to Greece before and expected warmer temperatures and more or less a 1st world country) it's about 14 degrees C right now and is NOT what I would call a technologically advanced country in many ways.

Spain is VERY advanced, at least Barcelona is and feels very much like San Francisco.

Anyway, we know Cairo is even less advanced than Athens but we had left all of our cool weather clothes in Barcelona and Cairo is supposed to be 26+ degrees C the rest of the week, which is more what we're dressed for.

Things have been somewhat...romantic...between Roser and I. She and I get along very well. I'll fill you guys in later about everything.

I'll check in again when I can, perhaps with pictures next time.

foo21er Vareck, signing out from Athens, Greece. :-)

Sure are a lot of those little smiley faces in there. Sounds like he's having a good time racking up passport stamps and seeing the world. Amazing what being laid off will do for some people.

I signed all the house paperwork yesterday (for selling the condo) and then dad and I went to move the little washer/dryer combo out. The new owners didn't want to buy it. I'll either use it at the cabin (since I took my good units for down in Milpitas) or leave it here and use it to wash my gym clothes. It could be handy to be able to run a small load every day and make sure it gets dried automatically before I need them the next morning.

I... oops, it's almost 2pm and I've got a conference call to join.

That was a waste of time, they couldn't get everyone on their end to be in the right place at the right time. What wasn't a waste is that the weather outside is great. I took my phone outside and sat on the lawn. Speaking of the weather, I took the team to lunch today for working on move stuff on Saturday and we sat outside on the patio at the restaurant (in the shade). It was fabulous. Spring is finally here, let's hope it stays over the weekend. (or not, I'm on call this weekend so I'm not doing anything fun).

Diet hot coca mix might be low in calories and fat but it sure tastes like crap. I would go to the book store and read and have some real (non-fat) hot coca but Don is coming up tonight. He's in town on real business and is going to stop by afterward and do dinner or something. The woman won't be home until late so it's just us guys fending for ourselves.

EMC called Ed (my boss) on Friday trying to go around me and get him to tell me to agree to talk to them. Nice try. Today they sent me email saying I had to call them before 9am because our sales guy is going on vacation. Again, nice try. Stupid vendor. I'll call them when I've got something to say or a question to ask. Not before. Going over my head just pisses me off and you know what? I make the decision on what we buy, not my boss. We're not so bloated where a guy in a suit makes technical decisions.

Saw a funny thing on the tactics list this morning; a shooting style called "Beirut Offhand". Basically hold your weapon around a corner, fire randomly until empty, repeat.

Dennis got his tax refund. Refund, what a funny idea. I got my tax paperwork from the tax guy in Friday's mail. He was "off by a little" on how much I owe. His definition of "little"? About $22,493. Doh! Time to break out the big checkbook and cut a check to the feds for ~$150k for my final quarterly of the season. Bastards.

I'm struggling with the what to keep and what to throw away problem again. I had to clean out the storage unit in the condo today and I ended up brining 5 boxes of crap back. Some of it was useful (like my motor oil box) and some of it was just junk. I tossed a lot (like 2 or 3 14.4 modems, serial I/O cards, etc). I just can't bring myself to toss my Newton. Maybe Vareck will take it and put it with his NeXT as a college area relic.

The big news of the day is.... I cleaned the garage again and made room for Krista's car. Scary, I know. She's now got a bathroom, the spare room (for the closet to keep her clothes in) and a spot in the garage. She almost lives here it seems. I even programmed her garage remote to work both at her house and here so she only has to carry one. Am I a nice guy or what? I even let her go riding around on her motorcycle while I cleaned.

And speaking of garage remotes, I put one of those remote keypads outside the garage like I had in Colorado. It's better than having to pack a remote with you when you're out riding.

Dad said we could leave my Suzuki in the motorcycle trailer but I'm not sure I want to do that just yet. I'm afraid that someone will steal the whole damn trailer from the storage yard. I may put the Honda in there, or alternately I might give the Honda to Troy since he wants to go dirt biking with his kid and he probably needs a bike. I don't like the idea of it just sitting around rotting after I put good effort into weaseling it out of Chris and cash to get it fixed up an running. (Funny that ispell knows the word 'weaseling').

I just found a hole in my backup plan for pong (again, I screwed this up last time). I should do my whole home directory, not just the HTML directory, otherwise I loose my image processing scripts. I'll just fix this now before the next hacker attack.

I put Loc in charge of writing a script to change the IPs on all of the Sun workstations that were moving this weekend (engineering is changing buildings and being broken up between floors). We can't use DHCP unfortunately because we need to keep static IP/name mappings and we're using winders DHCP which can't reserve IPs based on MAC address (at least that's true with the server shipped with NT4). We've thought about switching to unix DHCP but I'm not willing to take it on; I really don't want MSFT finger pointing if something goes wrong and they're not quite using standard DHCP. It's a valid concern. Anyway, Friday at 3pm they were supposed to shut everything down but because it was going to rain, they started early, at 2pm. At 2:45pm when his script ran, funny, it couldn't talk to any of the systems that were powered off and sitting in carts. Oops. Today all four of us came in and manually changed all the IPs which took 2.5 hours of our Saturday away from us. I'll have to do something nice for the guys next week (sushi maybe).

After working I came home and started cleaning house. Krista wanted to ride her motorcycle but found the battery dead so we had to roll start it and I rode it around a bunch to recharge the battery while she went to the movies to eat popcorn and see Resident Evil. Apparently she's played the game. Anyway, the battery has a charge now, we'll see if it stays until tomorrow. I think the alarm probably drains the battery even if the alarm is off. Stupid alarm, I'll have to disconnect it for her if that's the case. I did ride the Suzuki around too (about 20 miles worth, just to keep it moving) and fired up the Honda and let it warm up (again, just to keep fuel from sitting in the carb too long).

Right now I'm cleaning up papers in the den (I still have tons of filing to do, it's built up over the last few months) and thinking about making some food.

It sucks not hearing from Vareck; I'm really curious how he's doing in Spain.

It's raining here today; bummer. So much for us going on a motorcycle ride tomorrow (or tonight). She wanted to go out tonight and ride around in an empty parking lot to learn how to stop more precisely. Doubt she wants to do that in the rain (I wouldn't).

There is nothing on the schedule for this weekend now which is pretty odd. Maybe I can finish up with the garage lights (unlikely) or the paperwork in the den (more likely). The realtor called yesterday and said they want to sign me off on the Fremont place on Monday which means I really should go get the rest of my crap out of the storage unit at the condo this weekend.

I finally figured out the local radio station. They only have like 3 or 4 CDs and they have to play the same lame songs over and over again. They claim to be "the new music alternative" which I always parsed as "the new (music alternative)" meaning they were a new alternative station. In reality though its "(the new music) alternative" as in an alternative to new music (meaning they only play the same old music). See, it was just a word associativity issue.

Did I mention that I picked up the shotgun on Tuesday? Well I did and it's happily in the safe awaiting the end of the world.

I forgot to mention the Bernstein event on Tuesday night. The investment people I use had a meeting at the Ritz Carlton up in SFO. Lots of propaganda and happy feelings about the markets, etc. They had really good food though, sushi and roast beef and whatnot. The most interesting thing was the crowd. Everyone was white. Everyone. Not a single Asian, black, Mexican, nothing. And other than myself and Krista (and some of the employees) there was no one under 55 (or maybe 60). Old money. Interesting people to talk to.

Dad came over last night (while I wasn't there) and finished up 4 of the 6 lights. There is a crap load of light just from those four, it's quite amazing. The garage looks a whole lot different when you can see everything.

Krista is (right now) taking her motorcycle test at the DMV in Daily City. Let's hope she passes; it would be a big blow to her ego and confidence if she failed. Plus, I want to go riding this weekend (if it's not raining). I rode in today as did Jimmy, Rod and Charles. I've got Loc brining in his camera so we can take a picture of all the bikes in the lot. Mine does look funny next to all those sport bikes: ZX-9, Ducati 746, RC51 (with $2000 worth of European body work and $1000 worth of exhaust mods).

Krista called, she got her license! Woohoo! Now she wants to ride. Loc brought in his camera so here's something to look at:

I'm still reading the borderlands book. Man, is it cheesy! I am of course going to go buy all of the other ones now.... mindless entertainment. Too bad I can't write it. Yet.

Quick update, then I'm off to yet another meeting. Lots going on at work, medium-high stress. Stock is way, way down again. Stupid annalists.

Um, what to say. Been working, been going to the gym, been trying to sleep. Neither of us have been sleeping well lately and I'm not sure why. Maybe my work stress is making me toss and turn a lot which wakes her up? Dunno.

Stupid ass vendors are pissing me off too. They won't give us what we want, try to charge too much for it and are generally a pain in the ass. I thought people were hurting and wanted business. Now they treat us like crap again like it's 1999. I think I just have issues.

I've successfully saved my PC at work. The 8gb drive has been dying out slowly and I can't find another drive to replace it since my PC can't hack large drives and 40gb is the smallest I can find around here. I pulled apart one of the old disk servers for the old Linux farm and found a 36gb SCSI disk and a ultra-wide fast controller. Ghost actually took the image from the IDE and put it on the SCSI no problem and since I'm running win98 it just installed the driver and poof, I'm up and running again. The desktop guys said those sort of tricks won't work anymore on 2000 or anything 'new'. Too bad, I like pulling those tricks.

I'm up working in the den while Krista is washing her car (I'll help wax once she is done) so I don't have much time. I'll put in details tomorrow. Here are some fun photos though. The first is the '98 XR400 I paid $1 for (and paid $254 to get it running again at the Honda dealer). The next is the fact that I have too many bikes in the garage at the moment. The 3rd is pretty obvious.

OK, maybe I get to update before tomorrow. Krista finished the car and dad stopped by to help me with the lights in the garage. We're hanging 6, yes 6 double tube 4' lights (you see the one 4' light the previous owner hung in the photo above). We've got two of them up now and will finish on Thursday. Most of the time was spent figuring out which electrical boxes we would need at Home Depot and trying to measure out to make them even across the width of the garage.

Yesterday we went up to SFO and parked at one of Krista's friends house over by Golden Gate Park. We walked to a little sidewalk cafe for breakfast then wandered around the park for a couple of hours. We were going to borrow her friend's bikes and ride but it was cold and I really didn't want to as I was enjoying the walk. We wished we had a blanket and books to do a little relaxing on the grass since it got semi-warm later in the day (when the wind died down) but that stuff was in the Montero and we took the Spyder today for some reason. I planned to go to the tea garden but it was pretty crowded so we bailed and went to the wharf for clam chowder. Touristy but tasty. Made it home by 7pm and Krista made really bad pho soup. Really just rice noodles in chicken broth. She cooks worse than I do.

I'm reading this really cheesy book... Keep on the Borderlands. Yes, TSR (now Wizards of the Coast) had books written from the classic modules. Total trash but fun and that's what I like reading at the moment. Nothing too serious. If I wanted serious there is crap from work.

Ed picked me up today since we had an 8am breakfast meeting with HP. They're trying to sell us storage, hp-ux boxes, etc, basically anything they can. It's so sad to see all the lying sales weasels struggling to supply their crack habit. Or not.

There seems to be a new type of attack in the logs, something to do with default.ida?NNNNNN. No idea what that is but it looks like an IIS hack (anything that conforms to 8.3 makes me think of DOS).

This morning was the 3rd in a row that I've woken up from really bad dreams. Mostly they center around school; I'm late for class or a test or something and don't have my assignment done. I'm also naked in one of them and have to pee in a sink. Yea, wacky I know. The stress level at work is slightly down so I wouldn't think that ties somehow? School was a constant low-grade stress situation which is what I'm experiencing this week... hmm...

Today was the first day that Krista got to use her key. I left for the gym at 6:30 and she stayed home and left at 8 for work (she goes to the gym after work). We were both sorta freaked by the situation at first but we'll probably get used to it.

Our VP is pissing me off and I can't figure out why he does it. Whenever he reports things to the executive staff, he lies about the quantity. He says we ordered 600 CPUs, we ordered 400. He says the total is 2000, the total is 1600. He says they're 1.4ghz, they're 1.26ghz. Why? He knows better because I gave him the actual counts (in email) before he drafted his email to the staff. It's annoying because when I talk about the systems I use the real numbers and always have to answer the "but wait, I thought we had 2000, why are you saying we only have 1600?" questions all the time. He's just a dumb ass and wants to look more important than he is I guess. Or maybe they give him bonuses based on fluff? Either way it's annoying and he always does it on everything.

I signed up for the motorcycle school at Laguna Seca on May 23rd (I even put in a real vacation request and got it approved). I'm trying to get other people involved from work, we've got a lot of riders. So far no one is willing to use their bike on the track; they're afraid of 'using it up'. Come on, why have a good bike if you're not going to use it? I had a good car I wouldn't use and I sold it (which is the right thing to do, use it or ditch it).

The pimp shotgun is a Stoeger Coachgun made in Brazil. Finding images on the web is hard, but these will work for now. The first is what it looks like normally (although I have the black stock) and the second is from a custom shop that cuts them down and refinishes them to look good (vs. just hacksawing it down). Cutting a shotgun down below 18" turns it into a Class 3 weapon (machine guns, grenades, etc fall into this category too) which means it's a no-no for anyone in CA to even ever think about it (Clay and Cory had class 3 stuff in OR with minimal problems). The custom gun has a 9" barrel, so slightly shorter than 18". :) I also like how they actually put a new front bead sight on the 9" version. How exactly would you aim that thing?

I dropped my badge between the bathroom and the shower this morning and one of the blue coats picked it up. It finally showed up just now after I already went to security and got it turned off and a new badge issued. I never loose things. Guess I was distracted this morning. I also forgot to bring a towel back to work so I had to use my gym towel to shower with. Icky.

What a shitty day. We took down on of the 6800s for maintenance and it turns out that the engineers had some data squirreled away on it that they just had to have for the tape-out that was scheduled for today. We had to scramble to stick it back together but the tape-out was delayed a day because of IT. That's a bad thing.

We're screaming through March here... only 3 weeks or so until I'm 30. It's very frightening.

Saturday we ran around and bought Krista a bike finally. Or to say she bought it herself, I didn't help bargain at all. I inspected it, got the guy to agree to take it to a mechanic, talked with the mechanic, etc etc but she did the buying. $2800 for an '95 EX500 with a 2-1 pipe and a stage 3 jet kit (individual K&N filters). Not too thrilled about the stage 3, but she likes the way the bike looks and that's what's important. It's got an alarm on it too, whatever that's worth. I rode it back to my place from Oakland. I forgot how 'aggressive' those sport bikes are (and the EX is not aggressive) when it comes to seating position. I really like my BMW better.

She's riding around a little in the complex and down the street by the park. It took her 20 minutes or so before she dropped it. Came to a corner, couldn't decide if she wanted to turn or stop so instead fell over. Oops. No damage really, just a few scratches and her pride.

Total random photo. This is looking out of Krista's living room. You can see the bay in the distance there. If it's a clear day, you can see all three bridges. Poor camera, freaking out with all the sunlight coming right at it.

Don came up Saturday night and we went to the range and while we were waiting (I've never seen a waiting list before) I picked out a real pimp double-barrel shotgun. It's all stainless with a black (wood) stock. Double trigger, 3" chambers, no choke, 20". For no good reason I bought it and will pick it up on the 19th. What fun, a real impulse buy! Of course, I've been wanting a double barrel since 1992 (when I got those paper shotgun shells just to be like Mad Max). I'm not sure about the pimpness of it though. All stainless? It really should be blued with a walnut stock but hey, it was cheap and could be fun. Worst case is I'll have it powder coated. :)

Sunday we ran around picking up misc crap and supplies. I changed the oil in the Montero and made a huge ass mess. I miscalculated where the run-off from the filter would be (it's mounted horizontally so it spills when you spin it off) and put a 1' oil puddle on the floor. Plus it got all over the skid plate (which I'm going to cut so it won't happen again) so it's dripping even now hours later. Bad design. I was going to do the transmission fluid too (putting in red line now that it's got 3000 miles on the break-in oil) but didn't have a 27mm box wrench. I have a 27mm socket, but the front drive line runs right by the side of the transmission and I can't get the socket and driver in where it needs to be. Looks like a Sears run is in order.

Oh, and I'm thinking of giving Krista a key to my place. It would be so much easier if we didn't have to arrive and leave at the same time. I'm not 100% sure it's the right thing to do yet, but I'm getting there.

The M3 is gone. It was smoged and inspected and the guy came and gave me a check for it just a while ago. I had to put my 11-99 foundation license plate on the Montero. I wonder if any CHP would believe someone with such a POS car would actually be an 11-99 member?

I have a total, major splitting headache. I know it's from work stress. I can't see right and my shoulders are killing me. If I was a drinking man, tonight would be the night to do it. I've declined Krista's offer of company tonight as well, I'm just that toasted. Scary.

By sitting around doing nothing for a bunch of hours, I've managed to get rid of 75% of my headache. I'm suffering a few other medical problems at the moment (diarrhea) and I can't tell why. Maybe it's because I went to taco bell to try those steak quesadillas. They pretty much suck, in case you were wondering. And yes, I did go to the taco bell web site to find out how to actually spell 'quesadilla'. ispell has no international flavor. Checking the nutrition facts tells me why my system is revolting, they're total fat! OK, so I've tried them and that's over with. Whew, I've survived, mostly.

I also had fun playing in the garage pushing bikes around. Why? Because I can. It's so cool to have a two car garage with only one car in it. I'm happy.

More interesting web browsing off the taco bell site. Apparently taco bell, KFC and pizza hut are all owned by "Tricon Global". That sounds like the bad guy company in a James Bond movie. Their stock symbol is "YUM", how lame. Talk about a roller coaster ride though, they really tanked after 99-Q2. Although it would be fun to own some of the stock, I'll resist the temptation. Gotta leave stock picking to the professionals. Or something.

Jim (my good employee) called this morning and said his wife was having their baby and he wouldn't be in until Monday. He predicted the kid would hatch on Friday, so one day off isn't bad. I actually had to send out one of those stupid "congratulations" emails that the managers send when someone squirts out a pup. What's really lame then is that the VP starts asking everyone.... whoa, deja vu. Did I already bitch about this before? Let me go search. OK, the search turns up nothing. I swear I've bitched about this before. Anyway, the VP starts asking everyone "Who's Next!?!" like it's some sort of contest. I think they should give congratulations for having lots of sex and not having a baby. That takes skill.

Krista continues to look for a bike. I took her down to the used bike place last night and actually made her sit on various 500s and 600s just to show her that it's more than the engine size that makes the bike size. 600s are way bigger overall than 500s: higher seats, wider engines/tanks, larger tires, etc. After about 10 minutes she understood why the EX500 is such an excellent beginners bike. Now we just have to find one that's not too expensive or too trashed. (so far we've found one that's trashed and one that's too expensive, so she's seen the ends of the spectrum). Worst case is that she can just buy a new one, the dealers in town all have them in stock. She's wanting something sooner rather than later; I bet she makes some sort of purchasing move this weekend.

The Skippy that's buying the M3 came by work today to see it. We're meeting at the mechanic tomorrow so he can have it checked out and then do the paper work. I don't foresee any problems.

I think I forgot to mention this. Jimmy (the network punk who didn't get me my 802.11 gear) bought a Ducati 748s in the dull gray color. $15400 out the door. I hope it gets him some chicks...

I'm feeling way, way funky right now. I slept a lot last night, and slept in this morning and didn't even go to class (although I can't remember if he's even in town this week or not). I feel like crap and people keep telling me I look like crap. It's not a good feeling.

I did fire up e*trade options link and sell some stock on-line just to see if it actually worked. If a check shows up Monday I know it did. I feel so much better doing it on-line; I hate having to tell the broker what to do. I always get this weird feeling out of them like I'm doing something wrong. It's my stock and all, dammit. Phooey on the broker. These were just NQ options I got for becoming a manager, a little bonus if you will.

I accepted the 3rd counter offer on the M3 tonight, it gets officially sold on Friday. I also accepted Leianne's offer on the Miata, it gets sold off Saturday. So by the weekend I'll be down to the truck and the Montero and the truck is being stored at dad's shop. This is so cool, I actually have a free space in the garage. I'm going to hang my punching bag up now. I've wanted to do that for years. Kind of ironic. I have no garage and 4 cars. I now have a garage, and 2 cars. Life is funny.

My arm is healing up very, very slowly. I'm out of the one pill tomorrow (they have me 11 pills instead of 10 so I have a 1/2 dose extra to take in the morning) and have a few days (2 I think) left of the other one. I hope this 3-day headache goes away with the last of the steroids.

My watch showed today's date as the 1st... guess I forgot to roll it forward back there on the 28th.

Showed the M3 to a Skippy tonight. He offered a whopping $24k. Sigh, ever since the T-16 came out they just haven't been in demand. I didn't take it, I'm not desperate or anything.

XM radio has a comedy channel (I'm listening on-line now). It's damn funny. I wonder if they have a old-time radio show (like the shadow or gun smoke)?

My first home improvement, I installed that shower massager thingy in Krista's bathroom (even used silicon thread tape). It's the first time I've been in there since she put crap in there... talk about a chemical collection. I didn't know haircare was so labor intensive (other than the drying part).

The rest of the morning will be spent carrying books up into the den and trying to clean out the rest of the crap in the front room. I don't have a dumpster in my driveway like Vareck has so I'll have to take a load of crap over to the dumpster at the condo. As long as I'm paying the association fee over there, I'm going to use the dumpster. I'm paying for it.

Speaking of the condo, I got the two smoke detectors I needed. They were $6/each for the small cheapies and that included the battery.

Krista passed her motorcycle test and to celebrate we went to the store and she got a helmet and gloves. Now she just needs a jacket and a bike. She'll use my BMW jacket for now as well as the Suzuki until she can find an EX500 (that's what the instructor told her to get, good choice).

Before she came over I got some more household stuff done. I mounted a fire extinguisher in the garage as well as cut carpet to fit down by the washer and dryer. No more cold feet for me when I head down there to do laundry. Oh, and while Vareck is talking about NeXTs, I have this BYTE magazine from 1988 telling how cool the NeXT is. The magazine seems to simple, times were easier back then.

I just put the M3 up for sale on Yahoo! classifieds. It's time to clear it out of the garage I think. I don't want to pay for the insurance renewal nor take the deprecation on a car that's just going to sit around. I may get something else 'fancy' but for the moment I think I just want it gone. Dad says he is OK with me selling it. We shall see.

What a great day. Krista left around 6:30am to make it up to her motorcycle course so I have had most of the day to myself. I puttered around and ended up watching about an hour of MST3k before getting the bug to get out of the house. I took the Suzuki down to the gas station more to take it on a trial run than to actually get gas (although it did take 1.3 gallons). It ran really well and handled pretty squirmy on the street (just like the ones on the trip). I realized that this was the first time I've actually ridden it, and I've owned it for 5 days. I'm getting old and unmotivated?

After I got home I realized that I had not gone for a real pleasure ride in a long time. We're not talking a trip to the store, or the dealer, or to the bank or work or anything. Just a ride to be out riding. I stripped the luggage off the BMW and took off to get a hot dog at the stand on Skyline. It was warm, the road was free of gravel and traffic (for the most part) and I was cranking the GS through the turns like a sport bike. I had to laugh at myself when I got passed by a Ducati. I was playing Mr. Bad-ass sport biker hanging my butt off the seat and trying to touch my knee down in a turn when this 996 blew past me like I was standing still. I was doing all of 47 mph when he passed. It sure felt like I was going fast! I think that's a good thing, I get the illusion of speed without the risks and that's what really counts, one's perception of reality is sometimes more important than actual reality. I chatted with some other BMW riders at the hangout and met a guy with a '02 VFR800. He was pretty happy with it; it is his 3rd bike (he's got a BMW 1150GS and a Honda XL600 at home too). Lots of hard core guys out there on R1s and RC51s and I only got stuck behind one dumb bastard Harley rider going slow and making a ton of noise. I eventually passed him, those guys won't pull over like the minivans will... and they go slower too. I hate Harleys. They can take their 'lifestyle' and shove it up their ass, if they could find it with both hands. Anyway, I ended up back at home after 102 miles of going nowhere. The bike turned over 3006 miles, not exactly a lot. I didn't ride much last year. With Krista possibly converted into a rider that might change.

I'm going to get lunch then head to home depot for some supplies: garage broom, light bulbs, smoke detectors (for the Fremont place, every room must have one before it closes escrow), a light for the living room, fluorescent fixtures for the garage and probably some other stuff. I have a list downstairs by the coupon they sent me.

I'm glad I had the day off.... I would have left work anyway if I hadn't. The poison oak is taking off, it's covering my whole left arm now and it's "infected" according to the doc. All I know is that it's nasty and leaking yellow stuff everywhere. Ever try to bandage your own arm? It's a bitch. I feel very movie like stopping at the store buying medical supplies then trying to patch myself up in the parking lot. The doctor gave me prednisone 20mg and cephalexin 250mg to take for a week. The prednisone is a steroid, but not the muscle building type. It's supposed to make me moody, dizzy, hungry and cause extra light sensitivity. Oh joy.

Stupid DNS server went away on me again. Wonder what's up with it?

I had my tax appointment at 10am and it was pretty uneventful. I already knew what I still owed but I did learn more about how I can do ISO and NQ stock sales still and not have to pay 'generic' quarterlies. I only pay what I actually owe at the time; the tax guy will have to do a calculation each quarter. It's more work (and more $$$ I have to pay him) but this way I won't have to pay lots out unless I'm actually selling lots.

After taxes and the doctor I stopped by Zoom Cycle and picked up a helmet to wear on the dirt bike as well as spare clutch and brake levers, gloves and chain lube. I got the fancy Velcro goggle system just like I had in the desert. It makes things so much easier.

Next stop was the DMV where I paid the sales tax and registration on the Suzuki. The previous owner actually reported the correct sales amount so I had to pay the full taxes which was annoying but he had done it before I had a chance to say anything. I then went to the insurance agent and got it insured. Since I already have 5 vehicles on file at the DMV they didn't need to see proof of insurance on this one (good thing since I did them in the wrong order). I didn't have an appointment at the DMV so I had to stand in line, but it went fast, like 20 minutes. The required-by-law stupid screaming Mexican children didn't show up until the last 5 minutes I had to wait so it wasn't too bad.