I thought pong got hacked again and I took it down. Doesn't look like it was, everything verifies OK. I've put some more intrusion detection stuff in place today, we'll see how it works. More details later.

I rode 3 hours to Madera for Grandma's 80th birthday fest, then rode back. Not too horrid of a ride, but somewhat boring as it was mostly super slab. I managed to amuse myself somewhat taking pictures of my uncle's semi. If you look close at the odometer, you can see it just turned over 500,000 miles. That's a crap load of miles. It's also interesting to note that it's only a 6-cylinder. I figured they were V12s like our generators. Pictures are here.

Oh, and it looks like I didn't use any oil on the trip which is cool. Maybe it really is just doing the break in thing. That, or it's that BMWs don't actually use "oil", they use "Engine Lubricant".

Last night's theater event was pretty good. It was The Odd Couple which was funny, non-controversial, didn't have any music, etc. The set was pretty impressive and the actors played their parts well. There was an 'after party' at South First Billiards which was cool. Sue hit it off with Jo's friend, there was a number exchange and everything. It's interesting that she can meet people so easily.

I should put an update in here about the date last night with Elenore, and probably about the 200ml of oil I had to add to the BMW, or work or the ride today or the art festival in Boulder Creek (yea, I know, WTF is up with that?) or something but I don't have time. I've got to get ready for the theater thing tonight. I hope I have a clean fancy shirt.

I really just logged into to update the oil chart for the Montero. Must all my vehicles use oil? Dad gave me some 10 year old bottles of chevron oil. Oil can't go bad, can it? It's out of spec, it's not EC-II or anything fancy but since it's a vintage vehicle it's probably OK. The oil was new when the Montero was. How funny.

Work continues to crank along and today I figured out that I'm somewhat out-gunned when it comes to dealing with the architecture people. They're smart, which is easy to deal with, but they're also logical and crafty. This one guy really reminds me of a Vulcan or something. I like him though, he stays calm and on-target unlike our VP that wanders after shiny objects a lot. Anyway, we had a meeting today and with only the VP on my side it was a slaughter, I felt really stupid. It's good though, I'll learn a lot which is better than sitting around on my ass not learning anything. I sorta like it, other than the headaches it generates.

Speaking of headaches, I went to the witch doctor today for another check. I'm 0.5 degrees out of whack which he says is just fine. Woohoo.

I got my check from SSB today. They didn't "goof" this time and end up holding the money for an extra week or two like they usually do. Guess people got tired of calling them on that.

I know no one is interested in my 7-11 candy conspiracy, but I've found another. Magazines are rapidly becoming a rip off. Since I have quicken running for, say, forever (like '99 anyway) I know how much stuff costed back then. (Costed? That's not even a word. It is in German though: Ich weiß, wieviel es kostete".). Anyway, I know how much they used to cost. Gun tests was always expensive at $29, now it's $36. Asimov's SciFi went from $19.97 to $29.97. Wow, those are some serious percentage jumps.

This weekend was a long weekend of riding. Saturday I rode all over the mountains, Sunday I rode with dad. Since dad can't really do freeways on the KTM to well we stuck to back roads and ended up in Senol. There was a small winery there we stopped at for wine tasting (dad anyway, he bought 3 bottles) and lunch. It was very European, mostly due to the strange cheeses and sandwiches. Here are a couple of lame photos. You would never guess that you're only 10.3 miles from the gas station in Milpitas. The valley really isn't that big.

I have a ton to write about the weekend, but it's late and I'm tired. I'll try to journal tomorrow.... oh crap, but I have that doctor's appointment in the afternoon which will suck up a huge amount of time. Sigh.

Of course I shouldn't feel too bad, Vareck hasn't updated in a month, Kenny's journal is busted and Dennis, well, give Dennis a BMW and suddenly he's using German words like Blitzkrieg. Was ist oben mit dem? Ich lerne Deutsch, nicht ihn, dammit. Stealing my thunder. Obwohl, er in Deutschland wohnte. Das ist wert etwas. Ich glaube.

Ed's wife dropped the kid so Ed is out for the next 2-3 weeks. Should be quiet around the office.

Also, I got the house refinance taken care of. I bought down the loan so it's not a jumbo loan anymore (under $337k I think it is) so my rate is 4.25%. It's a 5-year conversion, not a 5-year ARM. At the end of 5 years they give me a new rate which I can take or I can refinance. I won't be here in 5 years so it shouldn't be an issue.

Just some photos to enjoy. One is of "Dawn", the digital bimbo that NVDA is animating in their demos to show off. We're thinking that virtual porn is just around the corner. The other is of K2's boyfriend. Not sure why I'm putting it here but she sent it to me along with the rest of her Vegas details so I figured I should put the image somewhere.

Life continues to trudge along in this very odd state. Ed doesn't want to get rid of me because he's going out on baby leave here any day now and obviously doesn't want a hole in the staff so I'm safe for a while now, at least until he gets back. That's good, but still doesn't exactly make me comfortable. Not sure if I should move forward, back or just what. I checked out my resume to see what it's going to take to get it up to speed and found that it's already got some NVDA stuff on it. Obviously it's old (I don't remember doing it either) but it's a start; much easier than starting from ground zero. I also found that after looking at a billion resumes over the last month that I like the format of mine. I need to add the buzzword section at the bottom of the page to catch all the automated scanner stuff but the first part is clean, easy to read and isn't so wordy that you can't figure out what I'm doing. I've been in the IT game for 12 years now, no wonder it's all I know. That's a long time for someone who's only been working for 15 years. 15 years, hmm... seems like I should have moved further along but I guess I'm still just a punk when you look at it. Plus those first years are useless, working at Taco Bell and the grocery store and delivering furniture while in high school.

I went for a quick hike (more like a walk) with Larklyn last night after work and got to listen to her first hand account of the stupid stuff that her boyfriend was saying. Basically he said "I can't go out with you if you don't have a job". Ouch, that's harsh! I can understand where he's coming from (don't say I agree, I just can understand). He lives in a very rich, very snobby status conscious crowd and I'm sure he's getting peer pressure as she doesn't fit in. I'm just glad I don't have friends like that.

I called the folks at Smithy Barney and put in a sell order for some stock scraps, 1300 of the 'converted' shares. These are the second batch of the ones that were underwater that they traded out for real shares so there is no strike price, I just own them outright. I've paid taxes on them up to $10 so I'll have to pay the tax on the difference between $10 and the sale (hopefully $21). It's not a lot of cash but it's enough to re-carpet and repaint the inside of the house if I need to sell it in a hurry.

I'm going nuts. I've been sitting here all day waiting for the plumber. Now the time window is between 2pm-5pm... hell no, that's not vague. Sigh. I did flush the thing out and fiddle with the valve seeing if I could make it un-stick if that was indeed the problem. Basically I was hoping it was MS-Waterheater v1.0 and a reboot would fix it but no luck. Not everything in life responds to a reboot.

I miss work sorta already, just sitting around the house is making me overeat (who knew there was food in the house?) and fidget. I have paid my mid-month bills and updated quicken and all that and will go clean the bike before doing my homework but still, I feel like I'm missing something. I did go to the gym this morning and try to workout, but it was half hearted. I somehow managed to bump my rep weight on bench to 190lbs and still do my full 3 sets which makes me think I'm sandbagging other days.

I stopped by dad's office and picked up a check from him and went to lunch with Leianne. She's depressed, if only slightly (which is huge for her, she's always just stupidly annoyingly cheery). She's feeling alone again, probably because her sister spent about 30 seconds on yahoo! personals and ended up with a half dozen dates out of it. She went to a boat show this weekend with one of her girlfriends and I would have sworn that someone would have talked to her. I mean, come on, a boat show should be packed with stupid Skippy type boat guys that would want a chick also into boats. Right? Maybe not. Come to think of it, there aren't really that many single white-cultured guys down here. At work there are only 3 in both my and the NT group which is what, 8%? Hmm... that's strange. Maybe I've been wrong about things all along (that women have it easy?) No, probably not. There are still 10 guys to every woman on the personals sites and the T46 roll-call is still highly male. Eh, whatever. I shouldn't really obsess about her dating woes, I have my job to worry about right now.

The plumber guy didn't replace the whole heater, he just replaced the pressure valve which was defective. It was opening at ~70psi which is way too low, should be at 150psi that it pops. He measured the pressure in the tank and outside and in the lines in the house and they were all normal. So, $126 for the two hours work and the valve (not too bad) and a $50 fee from Home Depot because he had to go pick up the new heater (did it first) and then take it back. Still, I'm doing way better than the $500+ that it was going to cost. Oh, and get this. The city changed the code for the height of the water heater off the ground. They increased it 1/8" so if you get a new heater you have to buy a new stand. What a fucking racket. Like 1/8" really makes all that much difference when it's already 17 7/8" off the ground. And who came up with 17 7/8" in the first place? No wonder everyone tries to get around building codes when they can, they're just a joke. I can understand standards, but why change something so trivial? Because someone's brother makes hot water stands and needs another condo in Hawaii?

I went for a run with Audi tonight, she wanted someone to pace her and make her run faster. She's pretty slow and out of shape so we didn't run far but it was good to get out of the house. I need to work on homework though and it's late.

I don't want to talk about Friday. It sucked, sucked hard. The short version is that I cleaned out my desk after a little run in with our VP. I did something I thought would be cool for the team but he took it as a personal insult directed at him (everything is about him I guess). Ed always warned me that if you piss off the wrong people you get fired (like K5, K5's boss, Denise, etc, did). I think I did just that. Oops.

Saturday, went and saw the play Hedwig and the Angry Inch with Jo after picking her up at the airport and taking her to her PO box in the city. It was an interesting to say the least. Not something I would pick or want to see again (this was her 3rd time seeing it) but an interesting experience. The theater was in a total shit part of town, everything smelled like urine and there were dozens of crazy homeless people running around. One crazy old woman kept running her wheelchair out into traffic trying to hit cars. Whack. The coffee shop we wasted time in was OK, sorta dingy but she said it's the best in the area. It was fine except again for the homeless people that kept wandering through spreading their odor around. The sushi place we had dinner at was good which surprised me. Fortunately it didn't stink.

Today I went to check on Sue and ended up taking her with me to my parents for mother's day crap. She's been cooped up in the house for so long any excuse for a trip gets her motivated. It was a great day (weather wise) and I really wished I was outside. I'm pretty drained (mentally) from Friday still and I didn't want to risk a mental fade while out riding and end up killing myself.

$525 and I'll have a new hot water heater installed tomorrow. That's the cost of the unit, installation and the "permit" from the city. They charge you $30 for the privilege of replacing a hot water heater. Bastards. The current heater isn't all that old from the looks of it and it references a 1996 law on the side of it. In fact, it looks exactly like the unit at home depot that's going to replace it. Too bad I don't know what's wrong with it, maybe it's fixable. I'm going to play it safe I guess and just swap the damn thing out and be done with it. I'm also trying to bump capacity up to 50 gallons as we're getting low on water some mornings when both Audi and I are trying to shower.

Speaking of the shower, I cleaned the bathroom this morning. Not very exciting, but I'm happy to have a clean restroom once again.

Didn't take really any pictures in Vegas (too many places were no cameras allowed) but I did manage to take two. One is everything you need for fun on a Saturday night, a ticket to an early show and money for the strip club afterwords, and the other is just a shot of the hotel from the pool. Not my best work. :)

Normal people's computers suck. I tried to fix Leianne's sister's PC and gave up after a few hours. It was so loaded with shit from the ISP, no less than 5 spy ware programs were running (even ad aware couldn't find the 6th one that kept causing IM spam pop ups even when IM wasn't running), and like 57 things going on in the system tray. I know I have 7 myself, but 4 are audio controls 1 is the hot plug/remove control, 1 for the virus checker and one for the rodent (which in fact I just turned off, I don't need it running). I don't have 4 messaging programs, nor any "buddies" nor "Internet helpers". I think the net works fine just by itself. I got most the crap off and now it's got enough spare CPU power to play MP3s and CDs.

I tried to turn off the audio stuff too but want the auto-launcher running and the little "BASS" icon is just to show I've got the bass boost turned on, it's not an app really.

Wow, a week without an update. How strange. Anyway, the Vegas trip is the big news. I had a great time. K2 was there and she and I and Lydia had dinner. She (K2) admitted to being bi and so Lydia make sure we took her to the club and got her a lap dance. Interesting stuff. I had spent $200 myself at the club just Saturday night talking to a girl for 3 or so hours. No dances or naked stuff or anything, just chatting. I know it was all fake, but it was fun. I'm up for going to Vegas again as there were a lot of things that I didn't get to do that I want to. Give it another 6 months and I'll be recharged and ready for it again. I sorta don't feel like writing much here because I wrote it all already on the foo21 list. I probably won't forget the details for a long time.

Last night was a lot of fun too. Sue has some friends in town and they took her out to dinner. I joined them afterward (at Nola's in Palo Alto) and we chatted for a bit and then piled into the Montero to head to some little corner bar down the street from Stanford for a beverage before heading home. Her friends are interesting, laid back people. They're also interested in going to Vegas now because of my stories. Hell, I should get a kickback from that place for promoting tourism.

I need to pick some more destinations for my Germany trip. I'm not going on the factory tour, it's going to waste too much time getting up to Berlin and back, like 2 days on the train. If I wanted to spend all my time commuting I could just stay home.

Pong has been up for a while now:

kelly@pong 6% uptime
10:47pm up 490 days, 2:41, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.09, 0.03

I'm going to have to move it eventually, it's in a spot in the data center that's no longer safe. We're working on the boxes it's sitting on top of, eventually someone is going to find it up there and wonder what it's up to. Last year I swapped it into a small half-depth 1u box that was easier to hide. I might have to bribe Dennis to let me put it up at the DR site or something and run it off our alternate Internet feed. It would be safe up there.

I talked to Sue tonight (it is South Park night after all) and she said that I got positive reviews from her friends. Apparently I'm "nice" and "sociable" and "friendly" and.... "cute". Cool, I'll take that. They wanted to know why she wasn't dating me and she said that we're neighbors and it's not allowed and that I'm always off with all sorts of women. I didn't think I was a player, it's not like I'm actually with any of the women I hang out with. I'm just sorta around.

Leianne asked me today to help her sister out with her PC. Something about a CD burner not working. She's trying to copy a bunch of CDs so I'll of course help out in the hopes that I'll get some new music out of it.

I got my workout in after I finished (most) my homework while at my desk at work. For dinner I had a slice of bread, three small pieces of cheese and two pickle spears. I wasn't much hungry until I got home where I had a couple bites of some old beef jerky and 6 thin mint girl scout cookies. Nutrition at it's best but I'm out of low fat salami, cheese and triskets. I have cereal but no milk. I do have two cases of power bars. Yum, but they're for gym mornings only, no snacking.

This morning the hot water heater went crazy. The pressure release valve is leaking and there is a nice puddle of water on the garage floor. I don't know if it's the valve that's gone bad or if the whole water heater is going out. Dad is going to stop by and check it out sometime today. I'm hoping it's simple, I don't want to have to buy a new water heater.

The good news is that Jim's wife is being her usual self and won't let him sell the car so cheap. Something about it not being fair to him. Hmm... I didn't force him to do it, I just gave him a crap offer and he chose to take it. Anyway, I didn't get the car after all and to be honest I'm really happy about that. Yea, I could have made a couple of bucks off the deal but I didn't want to have to deal with smog checks and the DMV and insurance and all that. The Montero will have to soldier on as the daily driver for just a little longer. Or a lot longer if I have my way about things.

Had dinner with Larklyn last night. She actually BBQ ed some chicken and boiled up some corn. Cooking at home is so much better than restaurant crap. She did comment though that I look really tired. Everyone seems to be saying that a lot lately. I don't particularly feel any more tired than usual.

I know it's strange, but I had lunch with Michelle today. Yes, the crazy girlfriend from four years ago. She's still nuts, but happy. That's good. She's got two cats, one is pretty cool.

After running some laundry tonight I went to the range. It was really quiet, the gang bangers didn't get there until just before I left. Out of 100 or so rounds I dropped two. That ain't too bad.

I really like watching Insomniac. I'll be sad to see it go.