I survived the trip to SF, the Montero picked up another bit of damage. I whacked a pole in the parking garage (very slowly) while squeezing into a space and folded the mirror in. No real damage, but my premonition was right.

So I took some photos of course. On the way across the bay bridge, I actually got off the bridge at the half way point on "Treasure Island" which used to be a military base (and sorta still is) but now is an a yacht club and some yuppie housing. Anyway, I took pictures of the SF skyline as you can see. What I didn't know was that I was going to end up in the building in the picture, the tall one next to the Transamerica building (the pointy one). How cool, photos from the ground, photos from the top. Notice the zooming in, pretty swank. :)

After the meeting (which still has me scared, they want all my money) I went to lunch with Darby (sorry Vareck, no photos of her, I should have thought to take one but she did take one of me playing tourist). She even paid, very cool. Afterwards she walked me over to SFMOMA and I checked out the Ansel Adams exhibit as well as some other weird ass stuff. Worth the $10 to get in. Another nifty opportunity was me to take photos from the balcony and then take pictures of the balcony from the ground. I was digging the symmetry. I must figure out how to get it to auto-focus when I don't have the LCD on; you can see that the shots I took with just the view finder are all out of focus and the ones that I took with the LCD are all in focus. The shots from on top of the building were all through the glass and they still look good. It was sorta foggy, sorta sunny and I think that shows in the photos.

My connection is starting to flake, I wonder if I'll loose cable tonight. @home is dead (chapter 11 remember) and service is supposed to terminate.

After the museum I went back and got the car which I left in the BofA building parking garage with all the M5s and 911 turbos (lots of Porsches floating around the financial district) and got it out of jail. Fortunately I had an all-day parking permit free from the investors because otherwise it was $33 for parking. Can you say "ouch"? On my way out of town I drove past K5's condo. It is really well located, nice building.

The city is packed full of cute single women. I saw more cute women aged 22-32 without rings in just the few hours I was wandering around then I have in the last year in the south bay. If I could hack the city (and had a job and all) it would be the place to be to meet women. Rich/successful women in the financial district too. Ed was right, it's the place to be. At least I know where they are! It was refreshing to hear people on the street speaking English too; don't know how long it's been since I've heard that.

It's totally ass windy here, some sort of 8' long palm tree branch blew down on the corner of Warren and Warm Springs and whacked the side of the Montero. The Montero is really taking a beating, glad I'm not driving the 'real' car. I think this is some sort of omen; I'll take the Montero to the city Friday (I was going to take the BMW and look cool, but no one will see me other than the parking lot attendant).

I just realized I'm one of those "game playing bastards" that women hate so much. Hmm... that's interesting. I always wonder what causes these sorts of revelations? I know the trigger, but I won't go into it here. I'm rather embarrassed about it actually.

I talked to the guy at the off-road motorcycle tours place and he said that he's got room in January. Dad and I are going to take a ride in death valley, apparently it's really nice in the winter (not so hot). More details will follow once I get things firmed up. The tour company doesn't have their web site up right now, they're moving buildings this week. I suppose I could scan the brochure but it's not that critical.

Anne (the ex from over a year ago) found my ad on yahoo! and started sending me hate mail again. She still says I've ruined her for all other men because I'm such a bastard. Wow, I wish I could remember what I did that was so damn bad (in case I have to do it again :). You would think she would have gotten over it by now, it's not like she's not had boyfriends since me (she was dating some guy as soon as we broke up). Some people. Give it a rest woman!

After 182 days of dealing with a semi-screwed up video card (that's how long my desktop linux box has been up) I finally shut it down and replaced the card. It's so nice to have the colors right again (white should be white, not gray) and to get rid of those 'streaks' out from all the icons. I've been running setiathome for 182 days now as well (on the second CPU, I'm not doing anything with it anyway). I wish I could figure out how to get the certs like dennis did but they claim to not know my login/email thingy. Oh well.

Have I mentioned how much I love this camera? Here were some difficult shots, taken into the sun through the (dirty) windows of the car. Not too bad.

Back to the old grind. It was nice being at work without all the noise of the other people in the room. Offices are so much nicer than cubes, too bad it's never been studied and reported on. I should get some headphones.

Last night Leianne gave me the report back from her sisters. The said that I was cute and a 'nice guy' (not a bad thing any more it seems) and that if they were local, both of them would be interested in dating me. How very cool, I didn't do anything special and very cute chicks would want to go out with me. Guess I'll see them again at Christmas then... hey, a reason to look forward to holidays! Yes Vareck, I'll get some pictures next time (now that I have a camera that will work in low-light settings). I won't dwell on the fact that I have no way of actually meeting cute chicks to display my nice guyness to, but that's another issue all together. After the happy report from Leianne we went to REI to look at jackets (couldn't find anything I liked) and to home depot to get light bulbs and pointsettias for the condo. Dinner was spaghetti and I made the bread sticks.

Yea baby, guess what I did today??? I went and got K5's present, and a little something for myself. Notice the photo I took outside the condo today:

Yes, I have macro now. :) I looked at a Minolta Dimage S302 (loved it, but it was too big), the Nikon 885 (spendy, no rechargeable battery) and the Nikon 775 which I ended up buying. It was cheap, came with a battery and charger (which runs $100 by itself!) and was tiny, only 75% the size of my Minolta. It uses the proprietary battery but does let me use my compact flash which is cool. 3x zoom, easy to set it up for custom stuff (outdoor, indoor, whatever) using just the wheel, I don't need the LCD to do most stuff (just like I didn't with the Minolta). It's only 2.1 megapixel but since I do everything in 800x600 (now 1024x768 because that's the medium size on this one) there is no reason to pay the extra $300 to get the 3.1 megapixel 885. The lens on the 775 is the same as the 885 and the 990 so I didn't give up anything there. Even the sales guy said the 775 was better for me (and he had both, no reason to push me toward the cheaper unit that I could see). Dad said I should do the S302, but I didn't like the size, it was about 35% bigger than my 2300 and required an external lens cap like the 885. It seems sorta trivial but since I keep it in my pocket, the integral lens cap on the 775 is a big bonus. Even indoor stuff looks good with this camera.

I went out with Diane this weekend, we went up to the city. Not the usual tour though, we went to the beaches on the west side. Very interesting. Ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea, went for a small walk around some ruins, went to the car show, had snacks in the back of the Montero, went to the Metreon (after the car show to eat), etc. It was a 12 hour date. Lots of fun, we'll have to do something again.

Been at work since 9am and I'm mostly just sitting around waiting for the Sun guys to do their thing. It's very boring. I have a book, The Redemption of Althalus, that I got yesterday at the local grocery store while picking up Mayo for mom that's keeping me mostly entertained. The problem is that the Sun guys bug me every 5 or so minutes so it's hard to get into. Fortunately it's just a fluff book so it's not like I can't pick it right back up.

I drove up to the cabin yesterday morning and spent the day with the parents and then drove home. I didn't want to be late this morning and just didn't know what the traffic would be like. It was very light so I suppose I could have stayed but it was just easier this way all around.

Wednesday night Leianne invited me over to her parents house to help bake pies for Thursday. I had nothing else to do so I went along and spent the evening shelling chestnuts. Her cute sister was there but went to sleep about 90 seconds after we got there (she's still running on TX time). I'm supposed to go over there again tonight to help put the Christmas stuff up. I may go, not sure yet. I think I scared her sister. :)

I was going to put a bunch of stuff in about my date, but she's not answering email anymore so I can only assume that she's not interested (she said she wasn't doing anything for the holiday so I know she's around). No big deal really, it's all part of the dating thing. I have a date like this tomorrow as well, I'm going into the city with Diane, she's going to show me around and just generally waste the day. That's cool with me, I need some unstructured time.

I really want to go to the gym at some point here, I didn't go today and it's throwing me off. I guess if I don't get out of here in time to go do the tree stuff I can hit the gym for a bit. Or tomorrow when I get home, that might be good too.

I just got back from going out to some bar with Leianne, Stephanie, Kristina and Paul (came with Kristina). Both of her sisters are pretty cute, Stephanie (the one I previously labeled 'the cute one') wore these tight leather pants... way too club-ish for the place we went. Oh well! :)

I've got to get to sleep, lots planned for tomorrow. It's raining now, I hope it doesn't continue.

I've not been journaling lately, not due to a lack of stuff to journal, more of just a lack of new and interesting stuff. I'm in a bit of a rut but working hard to get through it. For once I'm not sad, upset or even depressed, I'm just sorta neutral with a slight positive outlook and I can't say why. Nothing really good has happened, I'm just sorta floating along.

I really need to get out of the house, I've been inside since I woke up and been doing nothing but email, bills, laundry and cleaning. That's no life!

Typing up the date data is probably a good idea, I'll need it for analysis later. :)

Went to the DMV today to register the BMW but it turns out dad didn't sign in all the right places so I have to go back again. Doh!

A few months back I contacted a guy that was selling a supercharged Miata, but he wanted too much. I told him to contact me if he got desperate. Last night I got an email, he's desperate now. If I can get it cheap I'll buy it and sell Leianne my current one. Yep, the car swap. It's fun being on the 'winning' end of car deals for a change.

I've booked reservations at The Agenda which is supposed to be some trendy restaurant in downtown San Jose. I'll pick her up after I get back from Monterey, we'll go eat and then we're going up on skyline to park at one of the observation areas and watch the meteor shower that's supposed to be going on. Hey, it was her idea! She either wants to get me alone to kill me, or just to be friendly.

The failing economy is effecting my dating. Angie got stuck at work tonight working on some power point crap for a presentation tomorrow. Apparently her company only has 10 months of money left and they need this client to buy stuff to keep them afloat. I guess that's reason enough to work. We talked on the phone for an hour or so and agreed to go out on Saturday after I get home from golf. She's painting her house this weekend so doesn't really mind that I'll be gone while it's daylight.

Here is a picture of the fix I did to keep the wipers working on the Montero. It really doesn't look that bad now, does it? It's mounted at that angle on purpose, it's to keep it from moving backwards or side-to-side under heavy loads or in the wind. So far it's not moved at all in the last few days. I need some serious rain to try it out.

I pester Vareck for a week for an update and what do I get? Some math and graphics crap. Makes me think he could work for nVidia though, if he wanted to move and all.

So tonight as per the plan I took K5 shooting. As you can see from the photo she looked like a goof as usual with the big dumb grin and bundled in 500 lbs. of sweaters and jackets because it's "cold" in there. She actually did very well. I started her off at 7 ft, then 15 ft, then 25 ft and finally out to 30 ft (I think, about 75% down the length of the range). Most everything was in the circle, with a few flyers at the extreme ranges. She fired 1 round of the .45 and hit about 2" to the left of center, but that's not too bad at all. She actually admitted to having fun and said she would go again. Maybe when Don is up next or something.

And for no good reason other than it's sorta a cool picture is a shot stolen from the BMW web site of the R1150GS. If I were to get a 'bigger' bike I might just get one of these. It looks naked without all the accessories on it (bags, crash bars, hand protectors... you know, all that 'manly' stuff).

Oh, and I'm working the day after Thanksgiving now, our 900MHz CPU boards are coming in for the 6800s and the first down time to install them is scheduled for that Friday. I guess I'll go up to the cabin Wednesday night or something, spend the day with the parents Thursday then drive back down on Friday morning to go to work. Best break out the good car, it's going to be a long ass drive, with traffic! My favorite.

Just got a confirmation email from Angie, looks like the date is on. I think I'm scared now.

Serious rain here today and my wipers went out again, this time on 880. I had to stop under an over pass and try to effect repairs. I still have the tools in the car so I should be able to come up with something today while the car is in the garage at work. It's not just putting them back to factory spec, some of the parts are broken so I have to work around that. I can't get at the wiper assemblies without taking the dash out (you can't get at them from the engine compartment side it doesn't look like) so I'm going on feel.

Oh, and I forgot to put up a picture of Angie, so here it is. You can see what I mean about the 'drown rat' look. We'll have to see if she's cute in real life.

Dear Diary... just kidding.

Once again, the universe it totally messing with my head. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in very, well not bad, more just weird, and other times informative ways. See if you can figure out the good, the bad and the truly whacked in the next paragraphs.

We found a load of UPSes in the warehouse leftover from the move. We bought a bunch to use until the big room-sized UPS was ready, but it was there before we were so these were not used. Ed told me to get rid of them so I went around engineering and the software group and passed the out to people who are cool. Nothing scientific like seniority or anything (most senior guys have them already) just whoever was in their cube and looked to have a huge amount of computers. I made lots of friends that day. I also brought one home to power my alarm clock, the one Vareck gave me in 1992 finally died this year. This APC 1400 should be able to power my alarm clock for at least 8 hours.

Friday I decided that I need to really get in there and deal with my problem employee. Either get him up to par or fire him. Ed and my VP say I should start the HR paperwork in case I have to terminate. Ugh.

Friday night I talked to Angie, this woman I met on yahoo!, for about 2 hours. She seems pretty cool, she has MST3k episodes on DVD and knew off the top of her head that Bill Maher was in Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. (Her parents owned a video store when she was growing up, she's seen everything apparently). Sounds like a match for Dennis. :) She's in marketing, and shoots, and rides motorcycles. What a weird ass combo. We're going to meet on Wednesday and see The One. If that goes well we'll do something next Saturday. She also works out and may be cute (the photos are hard to read as they're water skiing photos and she sorta looks like a drowned rat).

On to Saturday. My dad, K5 and I went to the motorcycle show. I sat on the new VFR800, now with VTEC! It's really angular looking and they took the 'sticker' off the lower fairing so now it's just red. I don't like that, it looks like something is missing. All Hondas have the designator on the lower fairing (look at the RR, the F4i, etc) so with it gone, it looks like the bike was crashed and the lower replaced with an aftermarket one. If I got one, I would have to take it to someone to have them add the "VFR - Interceptor" logo back on there. I also sat on the BMW R1150GS, the big brother to my bike. I do actually fit on it, I can reach the floor on both sides and everything. K5 climbed on the back and remarked at the huge amount of passenger room, even with the full luggage setup (top case and side bags). I really like the look of it; very cluttered with lots of wires, hoses and little metal bars everywhere around the engine. I liked it better than the VFR, I think. Riding the VFR would probably change my mind. The BMW was $15k, the VFR was $10k. Both have ABS. I'm pretty happy with my 650 now that it runs correctly, no reason to upgrade until I get a garage to keep it in. The only photo that really turned out we took outside (the lighting was really funky in there). Behold, a very rare photo of me and my dad, both squinting into the sun.

Interesting note. K5 was really starting to annoy me at the show, she really is sorta pushy and self-centered. I didn't notice that so much before but now that the sex isn't blinding me, it's pretty obvious. I can honestly say it's good to be out of the relationship. I must be healing!

After the show we were supposed to go play golf but it started raining so we bagged that and left. On my way back home, the windshield wipers on the Montero quit. The passenger one came loose again and jammed, so I had to pull the whole arm off (while on the side of the road on 101) and just let the little metal thing turn. I'll fix it today (now that it's not raining).

I went to see Michele (yes, the crazy ex) and chat. She's doing OK, dating some guy from Santa Cruz semi-frequently. He's moving to LA in January so she doesn't think it will go very far. After we got back she offered to 'fool around', she again wanted to sleep with me. I thought I was pretty tactful about saying no, she didn't seem upset at all and kept the offer open. I must be getting old or something, but I had zero interest in doing anything with her. She's just not smart enough for me to be attracted too. I find it odd.

Here is where the total mind warp starts. She showed me some photos of the various people that had contacted her via her personals ad. One guy, two women and one couple. The guy was ugly, the couple looked sorta stoned (surprised? not) but one of the women was cute-ish. She was this 24 year old bi woman from San Jose. Michele wasn't going to go out with her because she was so far away (San Jose is far?). Anyway, I log in this morning to work on installing some perl modules for Nick (who is supposed to let me drive is 911 turbo when it's out of break-in) and I see that I've got a personals response..... from the cute bi woman that had contacted Michele. How freaky is that? My memory might be a little fuzzy, but I swear it's the same woman, and her ad does say she is bi. Small valley. I think I'll write back, I'm not afraid of driving to San Jose (we're talking 12 miles here people). Maybe she can teach me to dance or something.

I had a craving for a hamburger last night so I had two of those little cheese burgers from Burger King and now I can't move more than 20' from a bathroom. Ugh. First red meat I've had in a while, and now I remember why I don't eat it.

I replaced my 300 watt halogen bedside lamp (used to be K2's desk lamp) with a weird hanging paper globe lamp with a 15 watt "natural daylight" compact fluorescent bulb (60 watt equivalent). It's really sweet, the light is super white and takes some getting used to, but now all the other lights in the house look really yellow and nasty. I'm going to go to home depot and get replacement bulbs for all my other lights. Using 15 watts instead of 60 is pretty cool, and they last 10x what a normal bulb does. They say they'll pay for themselves in the life of the bulb in energy savings; I think it's just a nifty technology and the white light is really easy to read by. If you spend a lot of time inside, I would recommend you try one, it really makes a difference.

We played golf this morning at Rancho and I got to test out the new putter. I par'ed two holes and got a birdie on #5. My first birdie ever. Must be the magic putter!

I forgot to mention that last night I went to get dad to sign the title for the BMW and while there I fixed the windshield wipers on the Montero. The passenger side mount had come loose so the wiper arm was just sorta flopping around and not really wiping anything. I managed to pull the assembly apart (without having to take the dash out which I thought might be needed because they mount inside the cab instead of inside the engine compartment like a normal car) and tighten everything using just a 12mm wrench, a big-ass screwdriver and a small crescent wrench. Try that with your fancy new car. (yes, I know only old POS cars have the wipers fall off, but that's besides the point).

The coolest thing happened today. When Acropolis came to pick up the Suns we were shipping out, I ended up giving them an extra (old crappy broken) 6500 chassis. It would cost us more to fix than it was worth so we just gave it to them with no trade in allowance (now was the time since they already had a big truck here to haul it away). Anyway, I told Jim he owed us big for that and that he should buy us putters. At lunch we went to the golf place and he had us pick out whatever we wanted. How cool is that? I got us free golf stuff! I now have a ultra cool Oddessey #2.

I got Leanne to buy a DVD player yesterday so I picked up a copy of Aliens to play in it. The video quality is quite amazing and I like all the extra stuff on the DVDs. I also provided dinner with the movie: BBQ chicken (marinated in some sort of 'jerk' sauce I found at the store) and mushrooms, bread sticks, corn on the cob and spinach salad. It was all pretty tasty. I did smash my finger with the BBQ fell over (apparently it's not all that stable) which sucked.

I also looked at cameras while at best buy waiting for her to get the player. My biggest complaint about the 'good' cameras is that they are big. Well, they're not. That Nikon 775 is tiny, like half the size of my Minolta. It has 3x optical zoom, and all sorts of cool stuff (and probably takes good pictures) and uses CF. The only downside is the proprietary batteries, but I may have to live with that as everyone is going to weird form factors on the battery.

To spiff up the Montero I got some new wiper blades and.... floor mats! Yes, I forked out good money to get some heavy rubber floor mats. They even match the interior color, mostly. Now the shabby carpet doesn't show and it's a little quieter. I might get a cargo mat for the same reason, the rubber drowns out some of the sound coming from the drive line.

Since all the protein shake mix my mom gave me expired in 2000 (she gave it to me after it expired) I went to GNC and got some Met-Rx shake mixes. It actually tastes really good, it's just very thick. Phil thinks that it's because I'm mixing it with milk instead of water. I'll try water tomorrow, er Wednesday (I'll only drink the stuff after workouts).

It's like the 1950s I tell you. I came home today (late, I tried to stay after class to bond with the other students, I've been out of it for a while as you know) and there was dinner on the stove. Leanne apparently made extra baked chicken, rice and biscuits and left me a plate. I'm going to get fat at this rate. Better than lean pockets though.

Sometime between 3pm and now my phone got magically web-enabled. I went to make a call and saw this little icon that looked like a floppy that I had not seen in the past. Flicking through the modes it said "Net Ready" so I clicked and poof, I'm on-line getting stock quotes. It apparently does all sorts of extra stuff as well (yahoo!, news, etc). I have no idea why it now does this, but it might come in handy. If I could only get them to pay for the yahoo! service for the crackberry, now that would totally rock.

I told Phil today that we're going to have to start going out to those yuppie bars after work to gawk at women. He thinks Thursdays are best (ladies night) but that will interfere with my kick boxing so that's out. He also suggests we go up to SF to see where the 'real' women are. I've heard this from a number of people, that apparently SF is crawling with attractive single women. I'll take a drive if for no other reason to find out the truth for myself. :) Being single if nothing else is making me get out and meet people. Probably a good thing.

Ha! I did get to go play after all. I came home, got my gear and went and showed up around 7:15pm. They hadn't started, they started about 5 minutes after I walked in. Out of 15 shooters, I was the only one that nailed a good guy. I blasted him in the chest, twice. Great hits, too bad he wasn't supposed to be shot. Oops. We shot until 11pm or maybe a little after. Fun group; they meet the first Saturday of every month. I'll definatly go back, it's a good way to practice, have fun and be social. Another guy has a F650GS (he rode to the event) so I might get a riding partner out of it. Don and I went to Denny's afterwards for breakfast and now I'm at home folding more laundry and getting ready for bed. Guess I won't go riding today, I'll be lucky if I'm up before 10am. I need to wash/wax the car since I've been driving it today and it's gotten dusty over the last month (even under the cover).

Since the radio stations around here only have 3 CDs between them, I'm back to using yahoo! broadcast to listen to music while working around the house. I'm listening to a station out of Utah and it freaked me out when one of those "Shane Co" diamond ads came on. Those things are amazingly effective. Proof? Where is the store in Denver? "We're far south of Denver and easy to find. Just off Arapaho road, one half mile east of I-25". Where is it in San Jose? "Stevens Creek boulevard, one mile west of Valco Plaza". So when they start giving me directions to the store in Salt Lake (corner of State Street at 7200 South) it freaked me out for a second. Of course, they're closed on Sundays in Utah.... just like Colorado, God doesn't like stores open on Sunday.

I downloaded the camera. It was really dark on the range and the camera wouldn't focus so they're sorta blurry but you get the idea. Check out the cool motion-blur on that one shot. I didn't have Don try to take any pictures of me, I'll have him do that next month.

I've been at work in serious hardware debug mode for 6 hours now. I've missed the shooting event with Don even because it started 20 minutes ago and I'm about an hour out. I would have to go home, get my stuff and find the place (in the dark) before it's over. Guess I don't get to play. I've also not eaten yet today because I've been stuck here. Other than some candy people had left and water my intake has been zero. I'm amazed I can still type/think. I came in at 9am and started hacking, left at 11, got home, turned around and came back. It sucks.

I guess I'll go home now. Maybe I should try to find the event, at least to go watch Don play. I wonder if it's a reoccuring thing?

I may have to take pong off-line starting on Tuesday. Some outside security firm is going to start bashing on our networks from the inside and from the outside and I'm sure there are probably holes in this linux box. If it turns up in the security sweep I'm sure there will be questions. I'll ask Eric maybe if he can host my site.

Went to class last night knowing it would be a really slow night.

As I was saying before I was interrupted by real life, I went to class last night expecting it to be slow. I had no idea that there would be only 3 students and that I would be the senior ranking belt. Yes, me. I had to teach last night. It was surprisingly fun. I was working with a new student who picked up things really fast and asked good questions. I can see now why Don likes it. After I did my teaching the instructor showed me some cool stuff about settling into blocks to make them more effective (and to hurt less) and gave me some new drills to work on. All in all it was a good class.

Today, hmm... what did I do today. I had something to put in here... oh yea, I got a tattoo. OK, it's one of those fake temporary ones but it's still kinda cool looking. We had a health fair today at work (what do tattoos have to do with health I don't know) and they were doing them so to be a sport I went along with it. It didn't really 'take' as it's too light (I think the paste stuff dried to fast in the wind/cold as I walked around outside) but it's still sorta interesting. But through the magic of cheesy digital cameras, here it is. I could probably photoshop it to make it darker. :)

Tonight I went to a cardio kick boxing class at the gym. It was a Level 1-2 class, so I actually managed to keep up. My punches and stuff look a little different than theirs, but then again I actually hit people with mine. I am pretty tired now, I should sleep well. It was a good class, I'll probably go next week as well and try to make it a regular thing. It's way more fun than the ellipse or the treadmill or what have you and they supply the music.

I think it's time to go to sleep, I have to be to work for the 9am manager's meeting tomorrow. I was supposed to go to SF for a AIT3 tape launch event (yea, how special am I) but probably won't because I don't want to drive. I will sneak out early tomorrow and see The One which opens tomorrow, or I might see Monsters, Inc. Although I'm no longer a PIXR stock holder (should be, it's up from where I bought it of course) but it still might be mildly amusing.