I've had some really freaky dreams the last few nights and I keep forgetting to journal and write them down. Work is actually making me work and that's just not right.

Monday night I had this strange gladiator style dream. I was in an arena (the Coliseum I'm guessing... probably because I watched that discovery channel special a while back) and was dressed as a gladiator, minus the helmet. I was going to foot race two other guys around a big square. Right before we started running they gave us short swords and I suddenly realized that I wouldn't be able to out run both of them but maybe I could just kill them. It was Rome after all. We started running and I managed to get in front of one guy and suddenly stopped and held my sword out to the side and wham, he ran into it and died. I rounded the first corner, then the second and could never catch the other guy. I threw my sword (who knew you could throw a sword) and he suddenly stopped right before the 3rd turn and it stuck in his back and he went down. I grabbed the sword out of him as I rounded the last corner. It was just then that I realized that no one was going to live through the race because there was a big cyclops at the end of the track. He rushed me and stabbed me in the gut on my left side and started pushing me backwards. I fell but kicked up and caused him to fly over me (it's a move in both Aikido and Kenpo, it works wonders) and at the same time braced my sword on the ground. His head came down and the sword pierced his eye and he died. So, what I find interesting is that in all 3 cases I killed using the other person's energy to do it. The first guy "ran into" my sword, the second stopped and got hit (if he had kept running he would have turned the corner and been gone) and the cyclops actually hurt me but in the end fell on my sword. I took this 'advice' to use during the India project meeting. Our VP was going to give a briefing to everyone but he really didn't know what was going on, he's got all these random plans that he wanted to present and didn't want to say what we (or me) had actually planned to run the types of engineering tasks that are supposed to be run. Normally I would try to 'help' and make sure he didn't look like a fool and whatnot but this time I just kept my mouth shut, sat there and let him flounder and get picked apart by engineering. He in effect fell on a sword, it was so funny and yet sad at the same time. When people asked me a direct question I would answer but wouldn't offer anything on my own. Quite different.

The one this morning was me going into an old house. My mom was there and she was showing me around, like it was her old co-op house from college (I've seen a picture and that's what it looked like). It was very, very old and there was no furniture and in the middle of the main room was a large note on the floor which I couldn't quite make out. Something about the pantry being un-stocked, the wording was very strange. Anyway, it didn't feel creepy, just old. She went into the back yard and went down in this deep hole. I couldn't figure out what she was doing and it was dark so I used my blue "micro light" on my key chain to try to light up the hole. It wasn't working very well so I went down in the hole too. It started to get creepy when a tunnel branched out of the hole and I could tell something was very wrong. "Mom" was standing in this new tunnel and hissing and transforming into something else. I shined the light on her and then tried to push her into the tunnel but fell in with her. Inside the tunnel were a number of creatures and I knew them to be vampires. I ran back out and up the hole and into the house. Suddenly inside I realized that the old wood was stained with blood (I just though it was dark wood when I came in) and that there were no reflective surfaces in the house, all the mirrors were missing but it was clear where they had been. I realized that I hadn't noticed it when I came in put it was clear now and that I was going to die. I woke up at that point. That was this morning, no idea how it will apply to my day.

I'm back in the office, surviving Boston and it's crappy roads and nasty cold weather. What was I thinking going in the early spring? Oh well. The photos are up and you can see that some days it was actually clear and sunny for a while, if not warm. I lost some of my photos when the Nazis in the airport in Nantucket tried to arrest me for taking pictures in the airport (which doesn't actually have security nor metal detectors or anything, but apparently I'm a risk to national security and they wanted to detain me). I so wanted to just kill the stupid fuck (he was alone) but hey, I'm on vacation. Apparently the "terrorists" in the 00s are just like the "communists" in the 50s. Everything is done in the name of protecting them from us when really it's our own government we need to be protected from. Oddly all the sheeple in the world seem to be buying this too. Did we learn nothing? Probably not.

I'm adjusting back to PDT, although waking up at 5am this morning wasn't on my plan. I should be back to normal after tonight.

All packed and awaiting dad to show up to take me to SFO. I just now heard from Val confirming she would be there. I was getting worried, I hadn't heard anything via phone or email for the last few days.

For some strange reason I decided to use a revolver for the Monday night shoot last night. I used my Taurus .357 with some gun show reloads (amazing how many of those things I have) and while they were not full power loads, it was still punishing. With my bad hand too... I ain't too bright some times. I didn't do very well I don't think, I managed to drop two off the target. I got flustered a few times and fired double action at 25m but tried to "stop" about half way through when I figured out what I was doing. It was just bad. Near the end of the shoot a case separated and blew a ton of gas back out of the cylinder. My left thumb was riding high along the side and got cooked, there is a still a large black burn mark that I can't wash out. It's slowly fading but still sore. Doh.

No time to write (again) but I did at least upload the pictures from the Warriors game on Friday, the new bathroom that dad had put in the cabin, and the "sample" house that my parents are looking at for ideas on materials for building their Pioneer place. Images are here

Typing with the brace is tricky, but I'm getting used to it. Mostly.

K5 called me the other day and called again today. I talked to her for about 20 minutes and it was only quasi-painful, the kid kept screaming in the background which was annoying. Apparently if you don't hold the kid constantly it just starts to go off. Sounds like a pain in the ass.

Tomorrow we're going to a Warriors basketball game at the Oakland Arena. Netapp got us a luxury box so I figured I would go. I got an extra ticket for the woman too so she'll BART down and join us. She's a fan, should be fun.

I went to the doc shop about my right hand going numb and being generally in pain from typing. They gave me two wrist guards, some magic pills, stretches to do and 3 sessions of physical therapy. They said I shouldn't lift weights or anything, but it's perfectly fine to go to work and type all day again. Hmm... I think I'll ignore that advice and lift anyway. My fingers don't do much when I lift anyway, I don't have to use a mouse to change the weight stacks.

I did however move my mouse to the left side of the keyboard, won't hurt to use the other hand for a while.

Writing out all those German numbers actually seems to be helping, I can type them correctly probably 90% of the time. I've got the spell checker trained on them all as well so I catch my common errors (usually reversing an "ie" in sieben").

The weekend was packed with activity, hence my short entry yesterday afternoon. I just didn't have time to write. Friday we went to see Starsky and Hutch, quite an um, interesting movie. I tried to like it but it was too campy. I liked the ending where they brought back the original actors; that was amusing and even though I never saw the original series I picked up on the humor. Saturday we stayed in bed until 1pm or so (new sex is good) and then went for a hike. Just a quick 2 hour jaunt at Rancho San Antonio but at least we got out. I wasn't up for driving all the way up into the real mountains as that night we were going back to Kristen's place for a house dinner. All the people in her house got together for a St. Patrick's day thing. Who even knew it was even close to St. Patrick's day? Anyway, I got to meet the rest of the people in her house and the food was good and we played "outburst" and although the guys had a huge lead, we blew it in the end. Ah well, better to let the women folk win anyway. :)

Sunday I went for the Hamilton ride, and then went back up to Kristen's place. I have over 400 miles on those new tires already, it's crazy. She's been getting sick and yesterday she was wiped out. We got Chinese takeout (I was craving hot and sour soup) and watched TV. I tried to stay up to watch the special on gladiators on the history channel but couldn't make it... I crashed around 9:20pm. Fortunately Kristen recorded it on the replay thingy for me so I can watch it later. She's so good to me.

Overall the weekend was awesome and even the drive in this morning from Alameda to Milpitas wasn't bad (only 40 minutes door to door, not bad for 37 miles) and the trip from Milpitas to work wasn't bad either. I was all happy and upbeat and whatnot right up until the time I got to work. Then it started to fade as Ed started to bash on me. It's quite amazing how negative he is toward his people. Guess he just learns that from Joe. I hope I do better about not treating my people like idiots (unless they actually do something wrong). He takes the stance that we're always wrong and whoever else is talking is right. Quite annoying to always have to go on the defensive in every conversation.

Running around this weekend and this morning would give you the impression that the economy is on the rebound. Even with gas hitting $2.50 the number of new vehicles on the road with paper plates is way up. A few new MBs and Hondas, and a lot of 'poor choice' type vehicles too (large SUVs). I saw at least two of the new Nissan Armadas, a huge fucking ass vehicle, looked larger than the Suburban it was next to on Montague. It's getting harder to lane split with so many of those destroyer class vehicles on the road. Oh, and speaking of fuel, I gassed the Saab yesterday and it's getting 26mpg in mixed city/highway driving which is pretty cool. The bike is only getting around 42mpg. I think running with the top case on does create a lot of extra drag (I can feel the difference when it's not on there) plus I'm running at 85-90mph a lot of the time. Twice on the ride up on Sunday I noticed that I was doing 100+ while passing people. That's just not good, but traffic is moving pretty fast with the clear weather and on a bike you always want to be moving through traffic and not sitting in these little bunches where you can get squashed. Today on the way down I had to pass a CHP dude. He moved out of the fast lane and let me go by, but since he was only doing 50 in a 65 zone it wasn't a big deal. The other pin head sitting in the fast lane doing 50 who was in front of the cop wouldn't move for anything so I had to blow past him. I noticed the cop pulled back behind that guy after I was leaving so hopefully he pulled him over on suspicion of being stupid.

I forgot to mention that I cooked dinner on Friday. Grilled some of those bacon wrapped fillets on the Forman grill, made corn (frozen) and baked a loaf of that pre-made dough bread. The steaks were crap, but the gesture was appreciated.

Just got a call from Kelly5. I didn't answer (didn't recognize the number on the phone) but she left a message saying hi and that she was just curious as to what I was up to. It was a 408 number and sounded noisy. Cell phone? But why a 408 and not a 415 or other north bay number? Suppose I could call back and ask but I'm going shooting tonight and don't want to get wrapped up in a conversation and be late. I'll call after perhaps.

Damn, it's hot. I went for a ride up Mt. Hamilton to test out the new tires and it was a lot hotter out than I thought. I used my summer gear but I guess my body isn't used to the temps yet. I'm a little worried that when I go to Boston that I'm going to get sick from the sudden shift back to freezing cold (Val said it's really 38 there, not technically 'freezing').

I love 10:30am, writing the time as almost "half elf" is always amusing. For some reason my PC seems really fast today, it's not chugging or stalling on moving windows or anything. Must have been the crash yesterday afternoon that cleared things up. I really should just reboot it every Monday when I come in, win98 probably has some memory leaks in it somewhere, or some of these crappy apps (like the yahoo pager thing) certainly do.

Jury duty yesterday was way better than I thought it was. First, at the Hall of Justice they have a real parking garage with spots sized for real cars so the anticipated thrashing of my car didn't happen. They also have sections for "lawyers", "jurors" and "other". I figure the criminals will be in "other" and will probably look to steal stuff from the "lawyers" section since they'll have nice cars? I sat for about 1.5 hours in the jury room before they moved us to section #48 with judge Leon Fox, Jr. He was a friendly sort of judge, but you can tell he's a killer when it comes punishment. He was harsh with the lawyers when they crossed him. The defending counsel chick (a total hottie wearing 'fuck me' shoes and a short skirt) pissed him off twice just during the jury selection while I was there. Anyway, I eventually ended up in the jury box but due to my psycho nature, the fact I carry a knife myself (just like the defendant), and knew a bunch of cops and a DA (Deb back in CO) they cut me. I would have poisoned the jury for sure. The defendant, a big fat black guy in his late 40s who walked with a cane, was busted for having a switchblade "concealed in the passenger compartment of his car". While it's true switchblades are illegal, I think it's a stupid law anyway (another reason they probably booted me from the jury). Plus, why would they have pulled the guy over and searched his car? They'll probably go over that in the trial but they didn't tell us right away. Sounds bogus to me, but whatever. Glad I got out of there and didn't have to come back today.

I went up to see Kristen last night, I'm almost used to the commute up that way now. It takes a good solid hour and maybe 10 minutes to get from NVDA to her place on the bike if I leave at 6pm. That's the ideal time because I get the carpool lane as much as possible, although it takes me 25 minutes just to get north of Dixon Landing (where I normally get off to go home) because the car pool lane doesn't start until 3 more miles up the road past Mission Blvd (my old exit to get to Fremont). After 30 minutes to go 10 miles, it takes another 30 to go 30 miles. Some of that time I'm going 10mph lane splitting, other times I'm doing 95+ (indicated). Crazy.

Damn, the Nazis got me. I have to report for jury duty tomorrow morning at 8:45am. I'll have to go to the bookstore tonight as I've almost finished my current book and I dunno how easy it will be to do homework in the courthouse.

I was turbo late this morning, didn't get into the office until the 10am meeting. I left Alameda around 8:30am... but it was worth it. :)

I took mom to see Hidalgo last night for her birthday. It was actually a pretty good movie vs. what I thought it would be. Kristen is so going to cry when she sees it (she's going while I'm in Boston so I don't have to see it twice). After we went to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner and then I was home and in bed by 10pm. I slept until 6:30am, but forced myself to sleep again until 8:30am. I need rest.

I called about the jury duty thing and it said to not report Monday but call again in the morning to see if I'm needed for the next day. I think I have to call every day until they figure it out.

Not sure what to do with this day. Other than getting shoes, I don't have anything planned. Maybe it's a chance to catch up on sorting papers that I've been tossing into a pile for a month now.

Pictures of the clean car are up.

Speaking of papers, I got the DMV renewal for the Suzuki (which makes me want to go ride it, it's been sitting too long and a romp through the forest sounds like fun). Anyway, they say you can "save the cost of a stamp and use Internet renewal!". Great, a stamp is 37 cents and the "convenience fee" for using Internet renewal is $4. Doesn't seem like a deal to me. And "convenience fee"? Are they ticket master now?

Laundry is running, I've got all the windows in the house open (it's 65 out at least) and it's starting to smell like spring. Woohoo. Time to do some paperwork I've been putting off.... although why am I not out riding? That's what I want to know. I have a clean bike and fresh tires.... OK, I'm going. The papers will still be here when I return.

And sure enough after the ride the papers are exactly where I left them. :) The new tires are AWESOME. Even taking it easy (as they're new) I passed two other bikers on the way up Hwy 9, it was crazy. We'll have to see how they do on mileage but in the handling department they're a big win. I had a hot dog at water up at 4-corners and then came home via Hwy 17. Just 65 miles but enough to scrub the tires in and see what's to come this summer.

Busy day, but I got everything done I wanted to do. I got the tires put on the bike in the morning, had a bagel dog at Noah's (it was on my list) then went home and washed, waxed and did a serious detail job on the Saab and then washed and waxed the bike. Dad went with me to the dealer for the tires and running around searching for bagels just because. He just wanted an excuse to ride. I got a 650CS as a loaner which was quite painful. They don't seem to be putting any padding in the seats anymore. Or I'm getting old and my ass is soft, your choice.

XM works great. They did a really good job with the antenna, it's just this little wart mounted up front on the dash next to the alarm light and this little dome thingy that I have no idea what it does. I got the deck I did because I liked the blue illumination and the aluminum finish (seems like real metal and I know the control knob is). Unfortunately the old crappy looking green and orange deck would have been a better cosmetic fit... I seemed to have forgotten that the dash design is old school green and orange. Oops. I'll take some pics after I clean the car this weekend. It looks like it's not going to rain and actually get into the 70s. Awesome.

Kristen is off in Vegas right now, she called me this morning to let me know she made it and the hotel (Luxor) was packed with NASCAR red necks. She of course loves it, she's with "her peeps". Whatever, as long as she's having fun. She goes to qualifying today, has lunch with some driver tonight (part of a package deal), sees the bush race Saturday and then the whatever-the-hell-400 on Sunday then back home on Monday. Throw in a visit by her parents and time at the roulette table and she's got an adventure packed 4 days. She didn't want me to get lonely so she sent a picture (from her Hawaii trip) that shows off her boobs. I'm so simple to entertain apparently. She hates her smile in this photo, and I'll admit she looks like she's in pain, but it's something. It also makes me think she's got a lot more pics somewhere.... hmm.....

Tonight I'm supposed to go with Joe (the VP) to dinner with some people from Qualcomm. Great, today I'm sporting my t-shirt and psycho vest look (it is Friday after all) which probably won't mesh well with the stuffed suits he's entertaining. Guess they should have told me before today I was going.

Hey now, dinner wasn't so bad. The head of the data center for Qualcomm is a hottie and was a player in her youth so she's got some stories. Who knew it wouldn't suck??

Now I'm at home watching bad Friday night TV. After some shows I'll go to the coffee shop and read, just like the old days.

Damn I'm getting tired of people popping out kids. I've had one guy go out on paternity leave last month and one planning on doing it this month, plus taking some extra time before hand. It's total bullshit. My Scotland trip gets axed without a second thought but these fucktards drop a crotch loaf the the world stands on it's head for them. Fuck it pisses me off.

On a positive note, XM is being installed in the Saab as I type. Hopefully I'll have no issues activating it tonight. I'll have to turn off the one in the Montero too unless dad wants to take the unit for his bike.

Crap it's been busy. All this working and chasing around makes it hard to journal. Plus the month rotation always makes me lazy, I have to do all that extra work with vi to put the new month up. Sure beats having to use some real software though.

The pictures from the ride are up on the main page. Of interesting note is that I put "La Fogata" into the google translator and got "the bonfire". That explains the spicy salsa and the simulated fire on the sign:

Also on the ride I noticed that my front tire is just about shot, the tread is bald on one side and cupping on the other. That probably explains why the bike feels like it's about to flop over all the time. I called Cal BMW and set an appointment for Thursday. They've got the new Metzler Z6 sport touring tires in stock and I'm going to give them a try. They're supposed to be the new version of the Z4s that are on dad's bike (and what we rode on in Europe). It should be a pleasant change from the worn out Madacams that I'm running now with 8800+ miles on them (which is a lot for a bike tire). When I called Cal I let it be known that I was checking tires out on the web (which meant I knew about pricing) and Cal is trying to be somewhat sorta kinda competitive. They're charging me about $20 more than on-line (with shipping) which isn't bad. I've got a 10% off coupon I'll use and it will get it back down to normal. Sure they're screwing me hard on the mount and balance but I don't want the local sport bike shop trashing my rims just to save a few bucks. I could dismount the wheels from the bike myself but that would save $15 or so, not worth the risk of me knocking the bike over while it's balanced on the center stand with no wheels.

I drove the Montero to the range last night for the league shoot. I miss it in some ways (especially the XM radio!) but in other ways the Saab isn't so bad. It's still tough to take the the Montero will be going away soon. I gotta go to the stereo place and see about getting a MP3 CD/XM deck installed, I can't take this shit that Clear Channel has decreed that all stations they own (which is all of them from what I can tell) must play. I've already heard the 3 CDs they own and am bored.

When I was at the party on Saturday all of Kristen's psych friends were 'evaluating' me to make sure I was good for her. Here is the first review she got. Seems pretty positive, I've got them all fooled. :)

I really liked Kelly- thought he was very nice, not too geeky at all- very minimal levels of geekiness given his engineering gear-head background. He seems very taken with you- seems to be very feisty and a good match. And, you weren't kidding about the body, were you?

So, he has definitely passed the Over-focused-On-Star-Trek, Psych-Chat-Tolerance, and Good Sportsmanship tests- I would say no further assessment is necessary, unless symptoms worsen ;)

I looked up the pricing on the Alpine deck I'm having installed. They've gouged me for an extra $20. What, is $20 the standard up-charge now? Both the tires and the deck. Very odd. Maybe it's the CA surcharge, or more likely the stupid tech guy who doesn't seem to have time to shop around enough charge.