You gotta start to question your life when the biggest events of your day are some odometer photos... Montero at 177777.7 miles version 1 and version 2. It's actually kinda a challenge to do, when you get close you have to start figuring out exactly where you're at and where you can pull over for a photo and not die. This one was harder because it was at night and it took me 12 pictures to get the 2 you see there, the others are all blurry or the flash washed everything out.

This morning I tried to do an Alice's run but it's raining too much and since it's still early in the season the oil hasn't washed off the roads very well. I lost the front end twice just going down Milpitas Boulevard. Instead I just went to the bank and deposited my insurance refund check (from the canceled policy on the Honda I gave Troy) and stopped by Noah's' for a bagel dog. Yum, but I feel really sick right now. When I was unpacking the bike I noticed it was exactly at 7500 miles and since the camera was already in my hand.... RT at 7500.

Last night I went to the coffee shop and worked on homework. It took me forever since I seem to love to make things complicated. I could just write lame sentences, but I don't like that. I want to learn to write (and speak) like I do in English. So, describing my Thanksgiving I was making really complicated sentences like "We stayed at my cabin in the mountains. My father and I rode our motorcycles there, but you knew that we would do that." Yea, it sound easy but the second sentence has the present perfect form (which means past tense, I still don't get that), a coordinating conjunction (but) and a subordinating conjunction (that) as well as possessive pronouns. That's a lot for a newbie. My best shot at it is as follows (which comes out as crap in the translator but that's OK, the translator is pretty bad most of the time, it can't even get things in the textbook correct):

Wir sind in miner Hutte in den Berge geblieben. Mein Vater und ich haben unsere Motorad dort gefahren aber hat Sie das gewissen dass wir das gemacht sind.

I wanted to upload photos but the CF reader isn't working on my win98 box and the laptop is busy doing a backup to the external firewire drive (which means it's useless for 30 minutes or so... damn disks are slow these days... or more to say that disks are so freaking huge that they seem slow). I'll upload later. Hopefully today I can get a picture of the Montero odometer at 177777 miles (it's at 177770 at the moment).

I got all motivated and replaced the out bulb in the kitchen and after going to lunch with Tami I went to home depot and got the last 16x20x1 furnace filter they had. (And just to spell 'furnace' I had to do a web search on HVAC and poke around, I couldn't even seem to guess close enough to get the spell checker to pick it up... very sad). The furnace is in the attic which is never fun, but it's done now.

Quick is all updated, everything filed and I used the laptop to upload a couple of images. First we have the tractor being jump started (Montero to the rescue!) and then dad pushing around some dirt for the neighbor, and finally the furnace in the attic.

I'm home from the cabin and dead tired. We rode 110 miles today in pretty cold temps (47 degrees by the thermometer at the bank) which is nothing on the BMW but quite a bit on the Suzuki. That 2x4 covered in fabric they call a seat really starts to give you a sore butt after an hour or so. Of the few pictures I took, I wish I had taken a picture of my 40-cent repair job on the clutch. The lever has been fowling up ever since I got it. I thought it was the clutch cable (which helped a lot, it was mostly shot) but it was also a missing spacer in the lever assembly. I couldn't find the right spacer at Newman's general store in Pioneer, but I did fake it with a stack of 3/16" washers (8 of them for 40 cents). Works perfectly! Looks ghetto as hell but you can't see it unless you look up under the clutch assembly on the bars and really, who is doing that? The clutch works perfectly now, no binding on release at all. Woohoo.

I'll download the pictures tomorrow.

I looked at the new pictures of Dennis' new house and dammit if he doesn't have a 3 car garage! He can't even appreciate it! I called him to complain and he said 2 spaces are for cars and one is for crap. Dammit people don't put crap in the garage. Crap belongs in a dumpster, if it's not important enough to have a space in the house you don't really need it. And his place is only slightly (like 10%) more than my place. Sigh. Having a double income in a reasonable state really makes stuff like that possible.

Last night we went to Midori for dinner ("we" meaning myself, Rod and Chris Kim and Chris Wellington from Netapp). Dinner was good, but when we left Rod crashed his bike. I left first and noticed that traction was pretty weak with the cold tires and pavement but didn't have any issues. He apparently hit a man hold cover coming out of the parking lot and low-sided. Didn't do too much, crashed up the bike and dislocated his shoulder. By that time I was long gone and the two Chrises followed him home and took him to the hospital. He's doing OK today, pumped up on drugs to numb the pain down. They said he'll be in a split for 6 weeks but should recover. The funniest part is that he was wearing the on-call pager at the time and it got crushed when he went down. Good thing I had a spare, can't let him skip on-call duty. :)

Finally downloaded some pictures, I'll put them here to make up for the slacking in the journal. Here is my old alarm clock from college. On top of the usual clock is a 555 timer IC based thingy. After the alarm goes off for 7 seconds the fire alarm goes off. Makes you really motivated to get up and get it shut off. Try to ignore the dust.

Here is out latest attempt at getting some extra cooling into the data center. 50 tons of cooling stuffed into the parking lot and hacked into the room. The ductwork really vibrates when this thing is cranking. Unfortunately one of the two compressors burnt out almost instantly. Great quality control on these brand new units.

And last but not least, a picture of my room in it's clean state. First time in a year.

Sunday evening Tami came over (yea, I know, we're not going out) and made soup. Home made chicken noodle with actual chicken and everything. Pretty tasty. We watched Hollywood Homicide with Han Solo... what's his real name, oh yea, Harrison Ford. After that she went home. It was all very friendly and whatnot, no nothing but some cuddling on the couch. Jo came home about half way through the movie and snuck back out again just in case.

Today I finished up all my 1 on 1 reviews with the team. Did the first yesterday, the others today. I feel pretty stoked, it's good to be done.

Why exactly is there MS-SQL running on my laptop? I finally went in and did something about this laptop being half the speed of the 450MHz desktop. I got all aggressive turning off services and whatnot, disabling all the useless utilities that run, etc, etc. Don't know if it helped, but I feel better having killed SQL. I'm sure word won't work now, it probably depends on a SQL back-end to store each character or something.

Last night at the party turbo sucked. How bad you ask? Well I left early. Leianne totally ditched me to go talk to a bunch of stupid boat people trophy wives and after a few hours she came back and remarked how much she hates those people and how she doesn't like to talk to them. Hum... so I'm sitting by myself for two hours watching the world go by and she's off talking to people she doesn't even like. Then the music cranks up and it's so damn loud I have to leave; I found a TV in the lounge and watched Monster Garage until people started coming out of the ballroom and hanging around the TV making noise. I talked to my mom for a while (she couldn't take the noise either) and eventually Leianne wandered out. I know the story doesn't convey exactly why I would be angry but I was, that and sick (still have the lingering cold). So, tired, sick, cranky and she's drunk and stupid. Not good. I told her off, dumped the keys on her and left (mom gave me a ride home). I don't feel bad about it yet.

I gotta run to the mall and get my levies still (Sue is coming along, she wanted to look for something) and then at 3pm Tami is coming over to make me chicken soup. She's strange, but maybe she really does want to be friends? Whatever, I'm not going to worry about it. Enjoy it while you can, it will be gone soon enough.

Men's health had this thing on weight lifting camps. You go away to a camp for 2-3 days and they show you how to lift to get the results you want, break you through your plateau, etc. It wasn't even that much, sub $200 and they have them in SoCal (won't go there) and in Vegas (woohoo!). I'm going to investigate that tonight. Come on, whens the last time you went on a vacation and came back in better shape than you left?

I was channel flipping while doing laundry and came across some strange movie on SciFi. Anyway, in the 2 minutes I saw some guy walks out of a bar and is suddenly in Nazi Germany. Three SS looking guys come up and start hasting him. That's not the cool part. What's cool is that I can actually understand what they're saying in German!!!. Not 100% but I could pick out the key phrases like "Lassen Sie mich Ihre Identifikation sehen." (let me see your ID) and "Was fur ist diese?" (what kind is this?) and "Was gemacht Sie hier?" (what are you doing here) and "Antwort ihn!" (answer him!). How cool is that? If I get hassled by Nazis I can understand what's going on. :) Then I just have to whip out my handy phrase "toten Sie mich nicht. Ich Bin Kanadisch!".

Dad came over promptly at 8:30am and picked up the Suzuki to trailer it and the KTM up to the cabin today. We're going to go riding up there over thanksgiving and he wanted to have the bikes up there already and get the heat turned on and whatnot before they go up on Wednesday. I'll follow up on Thursday, not sure if I want to drive or ride. It's supposed to be freaky cold up there so I may just take the Montero. I'm not worried about the cold so much (I've been riding around in 42 degree weather without using my electric vest yet) I'm just worried about ice.

I'm listening to George Carlin right now and he's got the best one liner "I wouldn't fuck her with a stolen dick". I gotta remember that and find a place to use it.

So the table-for-two upgrade. Basically instead of random matches like the table for six events, they try to match you more exactingly. They have a questionnaire they have you fill out and then they interview you for about an hour (I had mine on Friday) and write down all sorts of crapola. Then they try to match you up with someone that has what you want and wants what you have. There is only one woman that does all the interviews and matches so in theory she'll get to know you and can get more accurate as time goes on. After each date you have to give feedback on what you like and disliked about the girl (or guy as the case may be). They'll take that feedback and try again. They'll also take the other person's feedback about you and use that to get a better idea of what you're really about. They also had me bring in a picture of an ex that I thought was cute (I used Krista of course) so they'll know what my type is. They know that if you don't find them attractive it's not going to work. I get 8 dates out of it. I asked her what her success rate was and she says in the last 5 years of working with T42 she's had two people not find someone to date long term. That's pretty good, I suppose. It's worth the risk.

I looked at some of the pictures of Dennis' new house, very snazzy. Looks like he's moved up in the world of real estate. I like the kitchen, the island will be handy. I can imagine there will be the trading of some MSFT stock for home theater equipment fairly soon. I pity his poor neighbors.

Jo has been here for a week now and so far it's not been a problem. She's working Saturday and Sunday every week (Tuesday & Wednesday off) so the house is still mine to wander around in on weekends which I like.

Tonight is the birthday party for my dad's boss' brother and I'm Leianne's arm candy. Apparently all is not lost, one of the 21 year old nieces is supposed to be very hot. Her name? Nikki. Dude, that is such a porn name.

There is some sort of class action law suit going against countrywide mortgage. If I sign the papers and they win I get $10. I wonder what the downside risk is? I really don't want to risk it for $10.

I'm turning into a big slacker on the journal just like Vareck. Of course, no one is as much of a slacker as Kenny (but let me go check just to make sure I'm not making fun of something he's fixed). Ha, soon as I say something it's fixed.

The big news is that I've upgraded my T46 membership to T42. What this.... shit, this place is falling apart. The main NIS/DNS server just rolled and they broke the license server for all the Cadence tools all in the last 2 minutes. Something doesn't want me to journal. I'll update more after the crisis.

You gotta laugh. We don't have "high availability" we have "high redundancy". The license servers had two lines in their resolv.conf, both pointing to the same name server. Doh!

I'm chatting with Valerie, she's on line doing Christmas shopping. I guess someone has to carry on that Christmas buying tradition or the whole retail market will just die.

Comcast changed my IP address today which kinda sucked. I've had the old one for almost 2 years now. Hopefully this isn't something new where they won't renew DHCP leases for more than a day or something. They may have just changed the whole block once though, it's a totally different IP range than before.

Kinda funny, kinda not. Tami is really upset about calling off our dating thing. Why that's funny? Well, she's calling me looking for support. Ha?

by Dave Karlotski

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and weight as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price.

A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time, entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar.

But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane.

Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over half a dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

More motorcycle stuff, check out this cool image one of the BMW guys took.

I really want to be out riding but the weather wasn't cooperating. It was sorta on Sunday but that's when I went to the fencing thing. Tami got her ass kicked a bunch, she really is new at the sport. She seemed to be enjoying it a lot though which is the main thing. I've got some photos I'll download tonight but the gym at the college had those orange sodium lights and the camera wasn't happy. All of the pictures turned out orange and blurry.

Jo moved in officially yesterday as well. It was strange to have someone sitting on the couch watching TV when I got home; totally not used to that again. She's one of those people that likes leaving lights on, but not as bad as Aud was. Aud would have the bedroom lights, hall lights, bathroom lights, etc all on while she was downstairs not using any of them. One of the 4 big lights in the kitchen went out yesterday so I gotta get the ladder out and take care of that one soon. It's not as easy to ignore as the lights out in the bathroom (it's one of those 7 bulb fixtures and I'm fine with only 4 of the lights working).

Tami gave me the "lets just be friends" brushoff today at 5pm. So much for that. At least I didn't have to go to the football game.

Ah glorious heat. I've got it cranked up and the house is 68 degrees. This winter stuff sorta sucks, it's been raining on and off for a few days now. I wanted to ride this weekend, just riding two days a week to work doesn't give me my fix but it's been cold and drizzling all day. Oh well.

So, the important stuff. Last night Leianne, Stephanie, Rod, Rod's buddy from Synopsis, Jason (guy from work) and Leslie (Jason's sister) went out. We tried going to Miakie which is this trendy noisy stupid ass sushi bar by Stanford, but couldn't get in due to the sheer volume of half baked college punks. You would think that would mean there were tons of half baked college chicks too but apparently not. We went to Nola's instead and had great food in a more adult atmosphere. Somehow I ended up buying to the tune of $170. Seems like once a month I get stuck with some huge ass dinner bill. Anyway, after some beverages there we went to F&A (the cougar bar) and stood around drinking and having a blast until 1:30am or so. Rod and Leslie were doing shots and they were both feeling the effects later in the evening. Leslie is only 24 so she's got youth on Rod, he was going down faster than she was. Fortunately neither of them were driving.

I woke up today at 8 and went back to sleep until 9 then got up and fixed the toilet in the guest bathroom (finally!), sorted some crap and cleaned my bathroom. I then went to lunch with Dad, Leianne and Stephanie for 2 or so hours at this Italian place ironically enough in Santana Row. After lunch dad and I went to road riders in San Jose so I could look at bike jackets as mine is now 7 or so years old and starting to fall apart. I found the current model of my jacket but didn't spend the $250 on it; but dad took the info down so mom would know what to get me for Christmas. Sigh. Stupid capitalistic holiday.

The plan for the rest of the day is to do quicken and then take some big trash bags and start tossing crap from the den. I also want to collect all the clothes I'm not going to use anymore and get them to a donation center. I don't use but 30% of what I've got, no reason to have them around. Tonight I'll meet Tami after she gets off work and we'll do coffee and reading. Nice and quiet since she's got to get to sleep and rest up for the fencing thing tomorrow (I'll try to take some pictures).

Also forgot to mention that Sue and I went to the range on Thursday night. She's not a bad shot for a rookie.

Last night sucked! Or maybe it was this morning, I can't tell. Basically I had bad dream after bad dream after bad dream. This morning when I woke up I was sweating and very sore (from hitting the bed?) and basically completely freaked out. I could have written them all down but I didn't want to, I don't want to recall them. They weren't typical 'nightmares' with monsters or anything, more like a serious of very realistic and utterly frustrating scenarios. See, I'm getting tense just thinking about them and I don't even have the details in my head anymore. Other than one which keeps popping up which I'm not going to mention because I don't want it around. Let me just say that PEOPLE SUCK and leave it at that.

So what else. I rode the Suzuki (for which the shop manual arrived yesterday) over to Tami's place to drop off some smarties (those nasty little circle candies). She loves them. Whatever. I checked the progress on her paper and then left her to it. She's got a lot of work to do and from what I can tell she's a really bad writer. Going to be a tough one for her. The bike ran really well, I'm just amazed what a 350cc single cylinder can do. It was a little cold out though... it's no longer summer thats for sure.

Today I rode the real bike in and it was a good thing too. The roads were packed today, seems like everyone wanted to go to work at the same time. They're doing construction on both the major east-west roads in the area so people are probably flipping between the two trying to find the least shitty route. They've been working on 237 since before I moved here so I can't imagine it will get better any time soon now that they've got 3 projects going instead of 1. They did widen 880 to 3 lanes all the way now which is nice... well, sorta nice. It now means that instead of a backup at the 3->2->3 and then 2 miles later doing a 5->3->6->5->4->3 merge you just have one big ass backup at the second one. That's worse for those of us that jumped into traffic between the two daily choke points but a total wash for those who sit through both. So it's the same for some, worse for others. Not sure it was a good use of money. :) It's probably better on the weekends though since the 3->2->3 thing caused a traffic jam 24x7.

I got my haircut taken care of early (Anita had cancellations) so I managed to get to REI to get a few shirts and restock on power bars. After I went to the mall (and got a pretzel) and looked for shoes to replace the worn out pair I am using. No luck there. Probably need to go to the real mall down in San Jose tomorrow after work.

I gotta find a way to get more exercise. Cardio in the gym isn't working, it's too boring and I don't do enough of it. Biking still seems like a good idea, I just don't have a bike and all.

You know it's a busy weekend when you don't have time to journal for 3 days. The most important thing is that the Montero is fixed. I finally got my parts and fixed the leaking transfer case and transmission shifter thingy. Pictures of the offending parts. You can clearly see that the gasket is cracked. Looks like when the guys put the controls back on they didn't bother replacing the gaskets, they just tried to reuse the old ones. Bastards. Anyway, it's fixed, but in the process I managed to over-torque one of the bolt heads and snap it off. Damn, that sucks. It's one of the 3 that holds on the transfer case lever so as long as I'm gentle with it when going in/out of 4WD I should be OK... as long as it doesn't leak in the mean time. If it does I'll have to take it to a pro to get the bolt out of there or drilled out or whatever it is they do. It's clear it can be fixed, but at what cost? Surly more than I 'saved' by fixing the leak myself. Just proves that I shouldn't be playing mechanic when I only have one car. (and it's been raining so taking the bike isn't an easy option).

Friday I went to see Radio with Tami. It was a fair movie at best. Yes, I know it's all based on a true story and whatnot but it was just too predictable and too, I dunno, flat. She really liked it though. After we went to Mountain View to have noodles. Bad move. They used so much MSG that my eyes were all dilated and I felt sick. She did too. When I took her home we started kissing on the porch and I suddenly got way, way queasy. I swore I was going to hurl. I managed not to and to get to the office (it was only 5 minutes away from her house) where I could hang out in the bathroom in peace. Man that sucked. Bad way to end a first "official" date.

Saturday was the motorcycle show. Dad and I went and dad's friend Ed came along. Ed and I ended up wandering around the whole time while dad stood in line (2+ hours) to get custom ear plugs made. They seem really spiffy, probably way more comfortable than the disposable ones I use but I like the idea that I can have dozens of pairs of plugs scattered everywhere rather than trying to track down one $50 pair. I should have go them though, I guess I was just afraid of having them stick mold material into my ear. At the show I saw the new R1 and the FZ-6. I wasn't impressed by the R1 like I thought I would. Yea it's fast and all that but I just don't care so much anymore. It's not about the bike like it used to be. It's about where the bike can take you. I want to explore I guess.

Saturday night I went to dinner at Leianne's parents. Kristine cooked some sort of fish with mashed potatoes (I did the mashing) and some sort of squash and peas. Sounds weird but everyone was fighting over the squash, it was really, really good. The girl can cook I'll give her that. We also watched The Italian Job which was boring and predictable. I tried to nap through most of it.

This morning I went to the T46 shooting event. It was mildly OK, nothing to write home about. I shot well enough and there was a strange looking girl that was at my station that did really well for a newbie. I think she was faking about being new, no one just picks up a Glock and shoots it that well. After that I went to with my dad and grandma to get her a flat panel TV. Yea, my grandma wanted a flat panel. What's the world coming to? After that I went to have an early dinner with Tami, she was working tonight at the store and we ate at the trendy Mexican place next door. It was fair at best, not worth going back to. Very trendy though, and what amounted to appetizers only was $24 with no beverages. Crazy, and people were loving it. Standing around down there shows that I am so not a yuppie. Can't ever think I was. Those people are just so fancy. I came home and then went right back out again to see the new matrix movie (Sue had been making noise that she wanted to see it). It was, do I even have to say it?, fair at best. I'm tired of shooting movies, and turbo lame dramas, or stupid comedies? Is there nothing else out there???

What a great class today. My instructor forgot her keys to the building (and we're the only people in the class area early on Thursdays) so we went over to the cafe across the street. It was hard working with all the background noise, but it did make me work harder because I didn't want the people around us to know what we were talking about. I used more German and less English than usual. I also made fun of my instructor and made some lame-ass jokes that she found funny. Austrians have a lame sense of humor.

Last night while lane splitting on the way home I experimented with different ways of looking at traffic. If I actively looked at every car, mirror, etc and constantly measured the gap-width and all that crap it worked, but was a very jerky ride and very tiring and it was hard to go fast. If I just sorta defocused my eyes and looked at everything at once it seemed to go much better. In fact, 'just using the force' allowed me to go faster and be more relaxed than anything else I've tried. Splitting lanes is sorta like a trench run, you worry about those fighters, I'll worry about the tower! (yea, I looked it up on-line).

Troy came by and took the bike, I turned over the title and it's officially gone for the low, low price of $0. It goes against my sensibilities to give something away but maybe I'm getting soft in my old age.

Crap, I was supposed to take this on-line web based training thing today for HR and I completely spaced it. Got busy with meetings and doing stuff and didn't finish (or even start) before the 5pm deadline. I'm sure I'll hear some grief over it tomorrow.

The good news is that the contractor we interviewed yesterday night is a good fit and he'll start working next week. Taos rates all their contractors 1-4 and A-C meaning you get ratings list 3c and 2b. The higher the number and letter the better the person so our mid-level guys are 2c or 3a, more senior are all 3c. The guy that starts next week is a 3c-4a, right on the edge. He interviewed well and completely stomped on all the questions; I'm hoping for good things from this guy. He got along with the team as well which is a major point, I just hope he gets along with the heavy-users in engineering. When he asked me the question of why we were replacing our old p4 admin guy I answered pretty honestly and "aggressively". Michael said it was all "Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction I'll strike down the non-believers!". I think that's a complement.

Last night after the interview (which ended at 7:15pm and the debrief for the team ended at 7:45pm) I went for coffee and to do homework with Tami. Yea, the 3rd official pre-date. We ended up coming back to NVDA because the Starbucks' tables are too damn small for two people to work at and were here until 12:30am. I obviously didn't make it for my workout this morning and had to ride the bike (in the freezing cold) to get here in time for my 9am meeting with some HP weasels. I'll workout tomorrow evening (class in the morning). So here we are several meetings into this and still no 'action' of any type other than hugs. I made it clear I was interested and she said that she's not ready yet. OK, I can live with that. Realistically I've got tons of time and it's better to get to know her more before trying to get naked. If I want action without substance I can get that elsewhere.

Speaking of cold, it's damn cold. Not cold like in PDX or MSP or what have you but for us thin-blooded CA types it's quite enough thank you very much.

The bike show is this weekend and we're going on Friday night. Probably should let dad know.

IBM is so clueless and their resellers aren't much better. They (rs-unix, the reseller) called Steve today to tell him that they screwed up on the order last time and sold us all the equipment at their cost... oops. The next order will be higher as it will include the cut for the reseller.

The laptop screen has picked up one of those 'hot spots' where the pixel is always on (and in this case it's always red). It's pretty obvious too, not tucked in a corner or inside an icon but right out in the open. It's just happened today from what I can tell. Also, I've noticed that the 450MHz desktop kicks the crap out of the 1000MHz laptop. It takes forever to launch apps and whatnot on the laptop but they snap up pretty good on the desktop. It's either the desktop disk is way faster or win2k sucks speed wise vs. win98se.

Work was pretty cool. No, I didn't find a good candidate to fill the p4 admin role, but I did get to work with Chris M. to negotiate a $2.4M software deal (which we got down to $1.4M but pricing details are strictly under NDA). He's really a smart guy, not just book smart but fast too. He was working parts of the deal that were leaving Ed and Joe in the dust; they just couldn't do the mental math and get the gist of what he was doing fast enough. I was following along perfectly and he would occasionally turn to me and ask my opinion, something he didn't do with Ed nor Joe. That's just damn cool, I think.

I got off the phone with Tami, we talked for almost 2 hours. We hadn't intended to talk that long at all, it just sorta happened. Tomorrow we're going to meet at Starbucks down by my office after work. She's going to work on her paper (that's due Thursday) and I'm going to work on my German homework, also due on Thursday. We're hoping this works because she has lots of studying to do and if we're going to hang out during the week at all we've got to be able to be in the same place but not bugging each other. I could get a lot of studying done if I had a study partner... this could work out.

Kenny is totally slacking with his journal. He must still be head-down in the whole house situation.

Busy weekend. Friday I went and tried on my zoot suit for the party and found that the shirt was the wrong color, the jacket was too long in the sleeve and the pants were screwy. Leianne took me to her ex-boyfriend's shop on Saturday and had it all fixed so no worries there. But first, on Friday night I went for coffee with Tami, a girl I found on match.com a few weeks back. She's pretty cool so far. The Starbucks closed at 10pm so we went over to the Embassy suites bar because it was quiet and talked until 1:30am. Cool. And for Vareck, here is a photo. She obviously doesn't look like this all the time, but you get the idea.

Saturday was the 20s party at the Ryde hotel, a birthday for one of Leianne's vendors and it was pretty cool. Leianne got drunk and ended up passing out in the bathroom, leaving me alone with the four single girls. :) I danced a lot. They were all cute, but they were dopers (smoking pot on the balcony and everything). Too bad.

Today we came home and I went to lunch with Tami before she went to work. She seems to like me, but we'll see. She's a woman and they're never quite open about stuff like that.

My main PC lost it's power supply so I stole one out of the PIII/1.0ghz system I brought home to toy with. The irony is that my main PC is only a PIII/450MHz. If I had more time I would have made a ghost copy of the disk and moved it into the 1ghz system and just ran it there.... but I was lazy and just wanted to get quicken back alive and not mess with moving a windows OS to a new hardware platform.

I almost forgot (because I sent it out to the foo21 list and it became 'reported' in my mind) that I got a call from a recruiter. They wanted to know if I was interested in a VP of ops position at Pixar, they said it was effectively the CIO position at their company. I'm not qualified in any way but it was pretty cool that they at least called me. It does show that maybe in some future time that I will be ready for a job like that. I have a future now?

Threw some oil in the Montero. The oil chart shows I've driven just ~11k miles this year. By years end I'll have 12k which is average (but low for CA) and that includes a lot of road trips. I've got 7300 on the bike as of today and it's only been on the road since April. I checked the records, I got the Montero at 144k miles, and had the major work done on it (tranny overhaul and tires, etc) at 150k. Those BFG ATs have almost 28k miles on them and they still look really good. They're wearing like iron, benefits of a hard tire on a light truck. It is due for a tune-up type thing, maybe next weekend when I do the transmission seals. I forgot to mention that I stopped by Hayward Mitsubishi after we dropped dad's KTM off for service and I ordered up the 4 seals I need. It took us about 20 minutes with the parts diagrams to figure out the right ones to order. All together with tax it was $8.99 for all 4. That's pretty good, I was expecting $50 or more, I mean come on they're 13 year old parts ordered from the dealer. Sometimes you win. I may pick up one of those nice Mitsubishi hats they had when I go back, my St. Bart's hat is starting to look pretty bad from all the use.