I'm still here and I still draw a salary. I should count the number of times Ed says I'm doomed. Someday of course he'll be right, but for the moment it goes into the false promise category.

So Thanksgiving.... Thursday we drove up to the cabin and did the traditional thing with the parents and grandmother. We played pictionary and Kristen and I kicked their butts. They got the idea and could guess stuff, but they were always too slow. Ah well.

Friday dad and I got a big ass 20'x30' tarp to cover the Montero with for the winter as well as some fuel stabilizer so the gas won't turn to ick while it sits for 6 months. I also did the Suzuki and got it filled with stabilizer and rode it around some to mix it in. I ran the carbs dry and found that you can run for over 1/2 of a mile with the fuel turned off. Damn that thing is fuel efficient. After that, we all piled into the truck and drove to Minden, NV so the girls could go to a craft fair. It was all of 20 booths, so after the 10 minutes that took they gambled for a while before we went to south shore Tahoe. There, they gambled some more. I was bored out of my mind, but played "The Munsters" nickel video slot machine (which was only a penny machine at the other casino) with the woman and won $20... which she then lost and then lost some more. Mom lost a bunch too and grandma came up a couple hundred ahead so it all evened out. There are just tons of old people there sitting in front of those machines dumping money in them. Guess it's something to do when you can't move around much, just sit and drink and smoke and push the button. I think it's sad, but it's not fair of me to judge since I'm not old yet.

Saturday we came back home and shopped around for drapes (she doesn't like the sheets in the windows so much). The best deal on what we wanted was $8k so we went ahead and ordered it. That takes the home improvement total to $26k and we still don't have furniture. Fortunately I think she's out of money so whew, we can ease back on the spending. Glad the house isn't that big! We also went to the cheap theater and saw The Bourne Supremacy. I liked it, she didn't. Go figure.

Sunday I did misc crap (stained the wood that will become her shelving unit next weekend, installed the dimmer switch on the dining room light, replaced the bulbs in the porch lights, etc, etc) and generally relaxed.

This weekend is a psycho class Sunday, but hanging shelves on Saturday. She's off teaching on Saturday so we won't have much time together.

Back from vacation (lots to tell there) and it was a shitty day all around. Google finally got around to telling me they didn't want to offer me anything, systems were exploding all over the place here today and I pissed off one of the founders of NVDA. Damn, why can't I make an ass of myself and get fired in the SUMMER so I can go ride around while I'm on unemployment? Damn I'm dumb sometimes.

It's late, I'm going home.

Take a note: I HATE CHRISTMAS. God damn this is a stupid time of year. Kristen's mom is being a total idiot. She's upset because according to her the other side of the family gets to spend every Christmas with Tanner (the grand kid) and it's so unfair. WTF? The kid didn't even exist last year, or any previous years so how do they cat "every Christmas" with him? He's never been to anyone's Christmas thing yet! Damn woman, buy another dog to baby or something. She's also flipping out because now Jeff & Kelly may want to do their own family thing on the holidays. Hmmm... maybe they're adults now and want to start their own traditions with their own family and not be pushed around anymore? Eh? What about that? No wonder people hate their mother-in-law, they apparently are all a pain in the ass. K2's mom wasn't like that, and hopefully mine won't be either (or I'll make her stop since I can actually talk to my mom).

On a positive note, I'm leaving work early and we're going up to the city to have dinner and go to the international car show. That can't be too bad. I also have to figure out why her new DSL to the office isn't working. Oh boy... I've never seen working DSL before. Hope it's not too hard to figure out.

11:11am is a funny time in German. Anyway, now I can get to pong fine from NVDA. Could it really be that the machine can't get good signal down in the garage between the hot water heater and the dryer???

For those of you really bored, check out some pics of our India site. Yes, this pile of 3rd world crap is supposed to be completed in just 8 days and be ready for us to move into. Somehow, I don't think so. Sure looks good from the outside.

Strange, strange, strange. arp -s used to add a static to all the interfaces on the laptop and now it seems that it only adds them to the first interface, which on the laptop is apparently now the on-board Ethernet which isn't in use. I don't know how they magically got renumbered but they did and now I can't talk to pong. Or at least I couldn't until I figured out to add the IP of the interface that I wanted the arp to be associated with on the laptop. Very strange, but it works. I don't think linux has an arp table per interface...?

So what happened this weekend. Oh yea. Saturday I went for a ride. I stopped by the BMW dealer to setup a service appointment, my 18k mile service is due. Apparently there are a lot of fair-weather riders even here as their service schedule was completely open. After that I went up Hwy 9 to Boulder Creek just to knock the cobwebs out of the engine. With the tires so squared off from riding in straight lines all the time it wasn't very energetic of a ride, but the road is awesome. They repaved the whole thing up to the summit so for a little while it's going to be super smooth. Not sure how hard the winter will be on all that nice pavement. After the ride I went home and then went up to Alameda to help Kristen clean (yea, right) and load the last of her crap into the cars. We had dinner with Jan and Rex (her old landlords) which was tasty and entertaining. Even their dog isn't that bad once she's calmed down. Today I screwed around trying to organize the garage for a while as the woman watched the last NASCAR race of the season (yea!). Dad came over after and we went to home depot to pick up some paint for the handrails and wood to work on the shelving project in the guest room. Didn't actually do any of it today, just got the materials. Maybe next weekend.

Dad also took a load of stuff to work: a book case, my punching bag, a floor lap and a hanging thing (goes on the back of the door). If you leave anything out by their dumpster the workers will take it before 6am. There was also a small kids bike by the dumpster and a red wagon, both of which he's sure will go first. Easier than goodwill.

Pong is back up in the guest bathroom instead of being on the floor in the garage. It seems to work a lot better up there although I don't understand why. The wireless router is really close when it's in the garage. It still "goes away" every so often, not sure what's going on. Maybe too much fighting for wireless bandwidth with the neighbors?

Lots of eating out today too. We walked to Starbucks for beverages and low-fat coffee cake and to read this paper this morning and walked to the Chinese place for dinner tonight. There is now a Chinese place, a Thai place and a Vietnamese BBQ joint all over in the little shopping center behind Longs Drugs. Across from that there is the big place with the McPuke, the TK Noodle house, Vung Tao (tasty Vietnamese) and Sushi Kai. I think there is a pizza place too, but I've never been close to it. We really need a cheesy burrito place close by, that would be ideal too.

Don, Kristen and I went to the Reno gun show over the weekend. Well, Don and I went to the show, Kristen donated money to the casino. It wasn't too bad of a show, not as good as a 1991 era show but so much less depressing than a CA show. Apparently the ban being lifted didn't do very much, there was hardly any military style hardware there other than about 10000 AR uppers. Don't theory is that every has bought all the AR lowers they want and now they just want to buy new un-banned uppers with all the "evil features" that got them banned in the first place like flash-hiders and bayonets. I still fail to see the spiffy factor in a bayonet. I would much rather shoot a rifle than turn it into a low-budget pole arm and stab someone with it. Eh, who can understand democrats and their bogus rules to help us be "safe".

The woman told me not to buy anything stupid, but I think I sorta did. I may not understand Don's bayonet fascination, but I went and bought this ultra-useless H&K flare gun kit:

It's just that it's all self contained in the little pouch that did it for me. I also over spent on an extra pack of 10 of the white illumination flares. That way if I want to play with it I don't have to use any from the kit so it will be complete. You never know when you want to signal someone. :)

On the way back from Reno we stopped in Sacto and went to lunch with Heather and Paul (the woman's friends) at some river side cafe (the Blue Gecko I think). Food was good enough, and the view of the river was nice. Don vetoed my Chevy's vote. Chevy's was 20' away from the Blue Gecko and had a river-front patio too.

Oddly enough I took 0 pictures the whole time. I guess I just get into the gun show = no photos mentality and forget you can actually take pictures outside. But Reno is a total pit and who wants pictures of that?

That was different. It's raining here so instead of riding to work and running to the gym, I just rode to the gym, worked out and then rode to work. I've always wondered how much of a pain it would be to have to deal with all my riding gear (especially when wet) at the gym but the large size lockers hold everything as long as I leave my helmet in the trunk on the bike. Good to know.

Darcy (one of Kristen's friends) came down for dinner last night. She bought a mini off some dude that won it at a conference and she's all excited to drive now. It took her about 2 hours to drive down from the city thanks to the rain's effect on traffic, but she still seemed happy to have a car that would start and run and whatnot without any drama. We went to the sushi place by the house which is only OK, but it's close. Their meso soup is tasty though, perhaps better than Midori. While at dinner I went over again why I'm kinda cranky with Kristen's mom. Her mom

Survived NASCAR, whew! Almost didn't survive today though, I got two more notices from the DMV saying they were going to garnish my wages and/or attempt to seize my property to pay the unpaid license fees on the truck and the Honda both of which I sold last year and both of which I've already done two sets of paperwork on. This time I went to the DMV in person and tried to convince them. They had me fill out the same papers again but are supposed to fax them up and the promise it's the last time. I'll believe it when I don't see it.

There was a reported bug fix for Apache that would get rid of the annoying 414 SEARCH errors that are going around. Apparently it's some sort of buffer overflow attack but it only works on IIS so all the Apache dudes get is logs full of junk. I put the fix in and it just stopped logging everything. Doh! Fortunately I only get a few hits a day so it's not a big problem yet. I'll probably just write a quick custom scanner like my ssh log blocker do-dad and start blocking the script kiddies out.

I took the Saab to the shop today to get the trim bits fixed that are slightly screwed up and bugging me. I can see it's from the previous owner using the edge of the window and not the handle to close the door so as long as I don't do that (which I don't) then there will be no future problems. The customers at the dealership were an interesting mix. A white guy, a white chick, a black guy and a black chick. All very professional looking, not the typical mix as there were no punk-ass kids there with the car that daddy bought them nor the clueless Asian housewives wandering around acting afraid of everything. In the waiting room there was no TV, only magazines like Newsweek, Sail, and Small Business Fortune. There was no children's play area. It wasn't exactly up-scale, just clean and simple and efficient. Nicer in a lot of ways than the other service departments I've been into. No image. Maybe Saab people know their cars aren't cool and don't pretend they are? That or maybe it's what Sweden is like? Or maybe it's what they want you to think Sweden is like? Funny, it didn't feel like Ikea. :)

We're all packed and fly out to Phoenix tonight. I'm worried it will rain on Sunday. The forecast still shows showers and 75 degrees on Sunday. You can't carry any bag larger than 6"x6"x12" into the racetrack (they have lots of strict rules on sizes of things) so I can't just haul my backpack with my rain jacket in it. It's also strange because it might be hot. So you either boil, freeze or get soaked. Or not. Desert weather.

I was a good citizen and voted today. Sure, I threw my vote away going for the Libertarian candidate, but at least I tried. It's important for those of us in already decided states to try to make a stand for something. Yea, yea, I know, sit down and shut up non 2-party supporter. I sent in my NRA life membership form today as well, sorta a counter to Kerry winning. They lowered it back down to $500 for life which is what Vareck paid back in the early '90s so I figured I should take advantage of it. It's about all I can do for the gun movement in CA, try to keep what we've got. I'm sure eventually we'll lose the whole 2nd amendment but sitting by doing nothing gives me no right to bitch about it.

My dad continues his poor-choice ways on how to "save money". He's going to trade 2 expensive cars in (his Mercedes and mom's BMW) on an even MORE expensive car. I'm sure somehow in his mind it's saving money. Me, I just wish the Saab was gone and I had the Montero back. I miss the Montero.

Sure gets dark early!