K5 took me to lunch today to tell me about her trip. She gave me some 'insights' into why I really broke up with her and in the end I told her I don't care what she thinks, if she's not willing to take my version of why I did what I did, that's just too bad. She took it pretty hard, but I can't care anymore. I can't let people's opinions of me get me down, it's just not healthy to worry about what other people think all the time. I have to be happy with myself.

Long day. This early darkness stuff along with the rain is really messing with my sense of time. It feels really late, but it's not. I figured it was around 8pm but it was only 5pm. Now it feels like I've been up all night, but it's not even 10pm yet. Maybe it's the fact that I've been paying bills and doing paperwork for the last few hours that's putting me into tired mode?

I got email from Minda, she made it to Tucson with minimal drama (just an overheating car, a burned out headlight and running out of gas). It will be interesting to see what sort of job she ends up with. K5 said it was inappropriate for her to ask, but she did anyway, she asked me if I slept with Minda. I answered honestly and didn't feel ashamed of it (it's easy not to feel ashamed when the answer is no).

The title for the BMW showed up in the mail today. Looks like I'll have to go to the DMV fairly soon.

Almost out of October already... almost out of 2001 already. That just seems so scary; time is just screaming past.

Today was day 2 of the class, and I'm much less sore. It's the prone stuff that kills my (and everyone else's) shoulders more than anything else. We started with some prone work but the rest of the day was a lot of weird kneeling and squatting positions, shooting moving stuff, moving and shooting stuff, etc. The coolest thing was this moving hostage target setup. The first one was a woman with a baby being held by a bad guy. They all were life-like (clothes, hair, etc) and moved around (controlled with rope). I made a clean head shot into the bad guy and shot between the baby's and the mom's heads. Very tricky. The second setup was harder by far. There were 4 life-sized and life-like targets. We had a woman in back holding the baby, one bad guy and one hostage they were all hiding behind. You could get a clean shot on the bad guy, but the bullet would pass through him and right into the woman and/or the kid. (which Brian ended up doing on accident). One of the advanced shooters grazed the kid's head, but with a .308 round, nicks are fatal. I waited until he popped out on the right side and hit him right above the eye. Not perfect, but good enough.

The other interesting thing was getting to hear incoming fire. The instructor had us all stand down range while he fired toward us (but not at us, duh). Gun shots sound very different when they're coming at you. First you hear the sonic crack and then you hear the shot. After years of hearing them from the back, I finally hear them from the other direction.

No pictures were taken, it just wasn't the right thing to do.

Michael didn't make it to the second day, he wimped out. He met this woman on Saturday night and they ended up going back to her place for a lot of sex (according to his definition of 'a lot'). Then again Sunday night they went at it and he was too tired to go to class. I was trying to figure out if I was jealous or not, and to be honest, I wasn't. I'm just not into thinking about those sex-filled days at the beginning of a relationship. It would have been nice to have someone to come home to for some down time cuddling, but I could not have taken what he was getting. Maybe something has finally clicked in my head? Maybe it's all the Advil I popped to keep my shoulder from hurting? I dunno but between his situation and mine, I'll take mine.

Oh, but speaking of coming home, when I walked through the door I was greeted with a hot meal. Leanne had made some fried chicken, peas and pasta and left me the leftovers. I haven't come home to a meal in over 4 years. I forgot what that's like.

After eating and relaxing for an hour or so I went to the gym for a quick 45 minute workout. I needed to stretch and get everything back into alignment. I should be just fine for tomorrow, except maybe my right thumb which kept getting squashed in the loading gate (until I learned some of the secrets). It's going to be bruised so I figure a week or so and it will be back to normal.

Back from the first day of the rifle class. I'm dead tired, and hurt all over. I did amazingly bad, actually. During the team drills I missed several targets and generally just performed poorly. The instructor says it's the bad trigger on the rifle but I dunno about that. I think I'm just sorta out of it in general due to the stress in my life and it's effecting my performance in everything, not just this class. I did OK on the handgun portion in the beginning (as Don's class showed, you transition to pistol quite often when using a rifle).

Leanne and her mom are finishing up the bed tonight, just the drawers left.

I realize it's only 7:30 but really it's 8:30 with the stupid daylight savings time thing and since I was up at 6 (real time) my body says it's time to sleep.

The Microsoft propaganda machine is in full swing, I've heard about a dozen or so Xbox ads just today. They're sponsoring some contest, a concert and some party event (so far). All I can say is GO! GO! GO! More money in all our pockets if they do well, so dammit someone go buy one of those things. Unfortunately I saw it on TV too and the demo game they had going looked pretty lame, just some driving thing. Hopefully it gets better.

Last night was pretty pathetic. Leanne is still working on building that bed with her mom (in the living room) so I didn't have anywhere to sit and read. I was going to the coffee shop but instead I just went to bed. At like 9pm. Pretty lame, and I ended up waking up at midnight, 3am, 6am and then finally at 7am when the alarm went off. Lots of funky dreams like trying to climb up a bobsled run. I know, pretty weird. Must have been the burrito messing with me. :)

The rifle class is tomorrow so this morning Brian, Michael, Glenn and I went to the range this morning to make sure everything worked, was sighted in, etc. I had to remount the scope on my M94 and even without a bore sight I managed to get the 3rd shot into the X ring at 25 yards. That's impressive for just bolting it on and going. I fired another 25 rounds and tweaked the scope a bunch to get it into the X at 100 yards and that's good enough for the class, I hope. They all had matching rifles, Remington 700 PSS (Police Sniper Special), two in .308 and Brian using .223. Lots of black synthetic stuff and high dollar optics. I looked out of place, but I have a built in excuse, how can I shoot with an ancient piece of iron like the M94??? (I'll do fine, hopefully really embarrassing them). Michael did a lot of IPSC stuff so his sidearm is a synthetic framed, stainless upper, comp'ed .45 with a red dot scope. The whack part? It holds 18 rounds of .45. That's a crap load of lead. I wonder how well it will stand up to being carried and bashed around for a few days? I'll take either my Glock 27 (if I go light) or the Kimber. I just checked the weather, Yahoo! says rain. Damn. I'll pack rain gear.

The kernel patches I'm waiting for are about half done now... (that's why I'm sitting here at the computer on a Saturday, working.)

After the range I took the GS over to the dealer to let them poke at the computer. It's got the same codes as the other guys' bike did, so they're worried. They're getting with the widget manufacturer now. Eli (the service manager) did ride it and say that it runs way, way better. He sees the light now. While there I found out about the shop ride next weekend. They're doing a dual sport run on Sunday especially for the "big" GS bikes (so my 650 and the 1100s and 1150s). There is some serious single track stuff on the route if you want to take it but I'll be skipping that, I'm not an off roader (yet). I'll take pictures of course. Should be a blast. I've got to print this out and stick one on the bike before the run (the engine in the GS is made by Rotax):

This weekend (and Monday) is the rifle class. Next weekend is the ride, the weekend after that is the International Motorcycle Show. At least I'm keeping busy.

Patches are in and the system is back up. We're now running the 108528-11 kernel. I'm also now dancing around the room listening to the caddy shack theme song and folding laundry. Glad no one at work knows what's really going on when we're working from home. :)

We went to the Chevy dealer today (Dennis, Jimmy and myself) as Dennis wanted to buy a Z06 corvette. They brought me along because I'm the only white guy they know and figured they would get better service with a white guy along. No such luck, they totally ignored us for ~20 minutes (we called ahead so they knew he was coming) after we said hello to the sales droid, then we left. Cost them a sale too (he's buying it in Sacramento this weekend). Dennis has now spent $170,000+ on cars this year, not counting the upgrades to the Audi. Insane.

How come no one ever tells me I have the dates in the journal file wrong?

Minda's visit was a lot of fun. We went to lunch in Boulder Creek, visited the ocean for a while, talked, saw Iron Monkey (which was amusing) and basically caught up on the last 5 years of our lives. She left this morning on her way to LA to visit her sister. She has quite an amazing tale to tell. The short form is that she's quit working, left her husband and has been traveling around the country (and up into Canada) camping, hiking, fishing and basically goofing off with friends. She's now moving to Tucson to start a new life. She's effectively taken 6-9 months off from reality to figure out what's going on in the world. It's a very cool idea, but very scary as well. She admits that much, I sorta figured it out.

The visit was really good for me in a lot of ways. I got to see the realities of an alternative lifestyle (without having to do it myself) and got to talk to someone who is 100% on my side of the fence on life issues and reaffirm that my opinions are valid in the eyes of others. I also got to see that parts of my life are really good. This morning when we woke up, I thought it odd that she didn't have a job to go to or any real direction. I may hate coming to work, but at least I have somewhere to go.... and that's a good thing. I think. It's hard to tell, especially sitting here in the office since it's such a poisoning environment. But let's not dwell there.

The other interesting tidbit is that my observations about dating ages seems to be proving correct. Minda left her 29 year old husband for a 43 year old guy. The 27 and 28 year old women in the office are dating/married to guys around 35. The people I know who were married to people of the same age are all divorced. Very interesting data. It may be flawed, but how could I run across so much bad data all at once?

And just for Vareck I took a picture:

I got the battery in my cheapy Eddie Bower swiss army watch replaced yesterday as well. I like it because it's so light compared to all those other watches I have that all seem to always be too big. I have very small wrists and they seem to change size all the time so I can never get a band adjusted right. Having a light watch sliding around isn't as annoying as having a heavy watch sliding around.

On an unrelated note, here is a picture of Kelly3 that Kelly2 sent me (for some unknown reason). This is the guy she left me for:

Not to be all happy here, but my workouts are really coming along. I'm gaining back the strength (and size!) I've lost since starting to date K5. I've increased my food intake and am putting good mussel weight on, around 4 lbs already and the difference in my arms and chest is very obvious. I'll be back to where I like to be in another month or two. That's pretty sweet.

I'm just sorta kicking back at home waiting for Minda to show up. It feels weird to take a day off during the week... but I should do it more often. Sure changes your perspective on stuff.

All right, I finished all of the data migrations off mariah! What a painful, thankless job that was. Next week we'll shut it down; it's one of the original E4000s that predates all of us at nVidia. We actually got $50k in trade-in value for it which isn't too bad for a old POS system that gets outrun but a PII.

Also tonight (earlier) I went to class. It's been a long time and I was getting whacked quite a bit but it was still sorta fun. Feels good to move around and get physical. I'm way out of shape though. I thought I was doing so well keeping myself fit but a few hours of jumping around kicking stuff puts it all back in perspective. The gym helps with strength but not cardio, I've not done any cardio for months. Actually, since my Rio broke (again). I really should try to fix it.... worked the last 3 times.

I also got a little bent out of shape about K5 in Seattle tonight. She went to dinner with Kenny and Dennis and that really bothered me for some reason. I feel like she's going to steal my friends away, or at least poison them toward me. I can them all having a good time and whatnot and it making me look like a bad guy for dumping her. I realize it's probably all irrational, but I still think that way.

Is it just me, or is that "smooth criminal" song that they keep playing ever 47 minutes on the radio just the Michael Jackson song played faster? It wasn't that good at normal speed, why is it OK at 1.5x speed? And who would rip the song off so obviously?

Leanne and I went car shopping (for her) today. We drove the MR Spyder and a miata and looked at the BMW Z3 and the Honda S2000. The miata still wins vs. the Spyder if you need to haul anything. The Spyder has zero storage; two oversized 'glove boxes' behind the seats that might hold a gallon of milk, but not a helmet or my Kenpo bag or anything substantial. Under the front hood there is a small compartment that holds the spare tire, but again, it's small (unless you ditch the spare). The rear is all engine, and the 'hot tray' they had in the first version of the car is gone on these later models. Build quality is pretty low (cheap materials) but the shifter is OK and the sounds from the engine are nice. Balance is weird with the engine behind you, and the steering is way over-boosted. A fun toy to be sure, but not as your only car.

I went to bed, bath & beyond to try to find new rugs for the bathroom. No luck, everything is too fluffy to allow the door to close over the top of it. I'll try to wash the ones I have (they lost about 30% of the 'fuzz' the last time i washed them). They were cheap to begin with and now they're threadbare and cheap.

K5 is on her way to Seattle by now. I dropped her off at 6:30 to catch a 8:30 flight. They don't let guests into the terminals anymore. They also did a 'feel good' search of the car on the way into the garage. No idea what they were looking for, but they didn't search the bags so they obviously weren't looking for anything real (unless they were looking for hidden people, but then why search the glove box?) It's just stupid, they're putting all of this very visible security in to make the soccer moms feel good, but it's really not doing anything but wasting time. Sigh, I hate people.

Last night I ended up seeing Bandits instead of the monkey movie. I wasn't in the mood for subtitles. I liked Bandits, it was sorta fun. I should have seen the ending coming but I didn't, I wasn't watching too critically. The theater was quiet when I went (6pm show) but was pretty busy when I got out later. Lots of crotch rockets parked outside, it was quite something to see (and hear) them all zooming around. Asian bike gangs are cool.

I'm really tired right now. Got up at 6am and went to play golf at 7:48 (sunrise is like 7:20) at Wente with Gary from EMC (he paid :). I had the camera along and took some pictures just so you could get a feel for the course. It's really nice, but long. The last few holes suck as they're just long ass runs (all par 4s which means I'll never par one). I shot par on 3 holes today, not bad for not having played in what, two months? Picture #8 there is looking down from the 1st tee box and you can see that the sun is just over the mountain. Another interesting thing, Gary is only 27. He seems older. Why do I feel like I still look like a punk yet he looks and acts so mature and is only 27?

I drove the BMW today for the first time. Not as fast as I thought it would be, but it is only 240hp which is kinda low these days when the newer sports sedans have 340hp. Well what do you want for the price of an Accord? The stereo is OK (not as good as the VW) but it is pretty quiet at freeway speeds which is nice.

I was supposed to take the bike in today, they want to check my computer for errors. Some other guy that's running that fuel nanny thing blew up his computer (they say). I put that out on the f650 message board and people freaked out. The owner of Techlusion (makers of the nanny) actually called California BMW to 'educate' them on how the box works. They (cal BMW) no longer thinks it's the aftermarket parts that caused this guy's problems. I'm pretty tired so I'm not going in (I already called and made up a lame excuse). I'll let them do it later, I'm not actually riding the bike right now so it won't hurt anything.

I put up a personals ad again on Yahoo!. My heart isn't in it really, but I feel that I need to at least try to date. K5 is already scoping for guys; she's going to 3 different parties this weekend. She'll meet someone fast. I figure it will take me a few months, it usually does. I did respond to one ad and she wrote back (quite a long letter, actually, which is rare) so I wrote back again and included pictures. She's not responded, so I can only conclude that the pictures scared her off. I didn't show her any psycho pictures or anything. Oh well.

I'm sorta stuck now, I don't know what to do. It's almost 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and here I am sitting with nothing to do other than go to the food store or clean my room. Sigh. I'm going to the 5pm-ish showing of Iron Monkey to see if Dennis knows what he is talking about in saying that it's good.

We had a bomb threat called in this morning so they're keeping us out of the buildings for a while. Good thing I guess, I was running 20 minutes late. This gives me a chance to get some email done without interruption.

I was cleaning out my contacts list (a freak sync accident with the crackberry brought some of the nVidia contacts into my personal address book) and I saw that we actually have a guy named "Wil Robinson". Man, that's gotta suck; I thought I got teased in school.

I'm such a wimp. K5 asked me to go with her to get a Halloween costume and i did. Apparently she has three parties to go to and she wants something that is cute and sexy, yet not too sexy as to make her unapproachable by guys at these parties. It really bugs me to think that she has already moved on and is ready for another guy. Maybe I'm clinging too much and need to just get over it and get on with life.

I got my haircut tonight, I'm no longer a hippy!

I can't believe how tired I am, and it's only 9:30. I didn't stay up too late or get up too early, but I almost fell asleep in the chair listening to the SF Symphony (on the stereo which actually works) and reading Super Street. Every time I read that magazine I think that Dennis really should have got into being a writer/reporter/journalist. It would be cool to know someone who isn't a computer geek in real life.

Leanne took me up on the Miata deal, it's had it's much needed oil change.

Whoa! (In my best Keanu). Minda, my friend from high school I've not heard from in almost a year drops me some email saying she is getting divorced and moving to Tucson and will be in CA next week and wants to visit. The universe is trying to fill in my free time away from K5 in some interesting ass ways.

What a great ride on Sunday! I slept in late-ish, had breakfast and then headed up into the mountains to ride Hwy 9/35. The bike runs really well now with that new EFI widget so I actually had FUN just riding around seeing what I could see and playing on the curves. I was pushing the bike pretty hard, it felt like I was going fast, but I really wasn't. On the VFR I would have been doing 90, on the GS I'm actually doing 55 but it feels fast. Amazing what that high center of gravity will do for you. After a few hours of riding I went to K5's house to finish up my chores. I washed/waxed her car (showing her how to use the orbital so she can do it herself now) and put the earthquake bracing on those cabinets. I can't remember all the other stupid stuff, but there was quite a list. We went out for Italian, then lit her outdoor fireplace thingy on the deck and relaxed and talked about old times. There was a lot of emotions and whatnot but it was a good close to the relationship. I think after a few months we'll be able to be friends again. That's a good thing.

I borrowed a 5/32" drill bit from dad and finish mounting the sling swivels on the Winchester. I did an OK job really, it looks pretty good unless you actually measure and then you can see it's slight off-center on the rear stock. Perfectly functional however. I honestly didn't think I could do it and I'm not sure why. It's just drilling a pilot hole in a piece of wood and threading the screw in, but it always seemed like it was too hard to do. The stock material is really soft (ie cheap) wood like pine so the bits really dig into it fast. I started with the dremel to make the first pilot hole and then ended up using a bit held in a pair of vice grips and turning it by hand to reduce the chance of splitting the wood. Took about 10 minutes total.

Dad also dropped off the M3 today, it's sitting in the car port under the cover. I need to go get it insured tomorrow... that's going to be painful. I now pay my insurances 6 months at a time rather than the monthly crap I was doing. It's just too hard to remember to record the auto-deduct every month and I'm really afraid I'll forget and overdraw. And speaking of cars, I think I figured out how to get the oil in the Miata changed for free. Leanne wants to buy it, but instead I'm offering to let her use the car for a week if she changes the oil. That way she can see if she really likes it (and then get buy another one) and I get the oil changed. Tricky.

The hike pictures are up. Usually disclaimers about the cheap camera apply. I cranked up the ISO stuff so I could take pictures in really low light (it was very dark under the trees) so some of them came out out-of-focus for some reason. Something about 'film speed' or the like. I've got to remember to turn off the low-light mode when it's no longer low light since it makes the sunlight pictures look really bad. Don didn't make the hike, he got lost and went home (and sent email which I eventually got on the crackberry). The hiking group was fun, if a bit old. They are mid 40s for the most part but kept up a really fast pace. I kept getting left behind because I stopped to take pictures; they just blazed on the whole morning.

After the hike I went with dad so he could pick up his new car (a 500SL Mercedes convertible, a total, total, total old geazer car). Then we went to the old coin store. I should not have gone. :) I got a neckless with a coin minted in 32 BC. Yes, it's 2033 years old. It's a Marc Antony 'Legionary Denarius', a coin used to pay the soldiers. You can get all sorts of grades of coin, from really poor stamped, very off-center stuff for $30. Mine is a perfectly centered, excellent stamping (rating is very fine+++ or something). I saw a few of the same coin and you really can tell the difference. Here is a picture of one off the web. You can see how this coin (for sale for $375) is not very good because the strike on one side is way off-center and you're missing a lot. The text at the bottom is also sorta blurry. Mine is very crisp and you can clearly see "LEG XXIII". I don't know if it's more or less rare because it's toward the end of the series (they say 20-something legions, 23 is getting up there and everything on the net is in the 10-12 range).

Anyway, mine is way better, according to the guy 'just down from museum quality' which I didn't want to pay for. It's in a gold circle mounted with 4 mounting points and I picked out a nice 20" chain so it hangs right were I want it. My dad has a 1675 Spanish coin on a chain and so does my mom. Apparently it's our new family tradition or something. I talked about doing this in the June 2000 journal, so it only took me a year to actually make happen. Back then I wanted a titanium chain... too bad I can't find such a thing. I guess they can't machine it that small and still make it 'affordable'.

I've printed out the maps for this weekend. I'm going with the Bay Area hiking club to Uvas Canyon. Don said he's going to come along too but I've not heard from him since he said he was in earlier in the week. It's over half way down from my place to his so it's an easy drive for him compared to the usual haul all the way up to Fremont.

There have been two items on my plate for 3 days now. Call the stock people and make them send me my check, and get insurance on the Miata. I did both today. I also made it to my 2pm DMV appointment and now have title and new tags to the car. It's finally officially mine, woohoo. My insurance guy wanted to buy it from me. I've not actually told anyone I'm going to sell it, they just keep offering. Very odd. If I knew what to replace it with I would turn it for quick money, it's really too loud (the same reason I got rid of the first one). A nice boring civic maybe.

As I was telling Vareck, I picked up the Benelli today; what a nice piece of equipment. I've figured out how to swap it from semi to pump action and it's pretty easy. It won't close on an empty chamber unless you push the release button which is why it seemed to odd to use in the store. I was cycling it with some 12 gauge snap caps and it works just fine when there are rounds ready to be chambered. The manual is really trick as well. It folds open into two sections with all the pictures in one book and the text in the other. That way the 3 languages can all use the same set of pictures. BMW should do that trick. They have all the pictures in the German section and the rest of us have to flip back and forth trying to find them all as our sections are only text. If the Benelli works like the manual, I'm sure it will be an excellent weapon.

Not much else to report, just lots of stupid stuff at work. Not quite the same as before, there are some politics going around that I don't like. Some of the 3dfx losers are trying to get nVidia to hire their other 3dfx looser friends that didn't join when they had the chance. Now that they are out of work they're trying to get back inside nVidia. We can't afford to hire on a bunch of dead weight. They even tried to bring back a guy that we didn't want (and I think engineering sorta fired him). I don't like the 3dfx people, they're still out on their own trying to do things their way. Hello, their way sucks, that's why they went out of business.

Did I mention that I went to lunch with Michele on Monday? Doesn't look like it. She was the other woman I was going out with back when I was doing Camille. I've not seen her in over a year. It was nice to see that she's doing OK for herself. She also made it clear that she wants to sleep with me again, right away (now that I'm free). I'm not interested in her, but it's still flattering.

I almost forgot, I made waffles for breakfast this morning. Breakfast is good, I'm glad I'm trying to make it a habit.

I went to the store yesterday and bought some stuff. Those meal-in-a-skillet things (garlic chicken, pasta and veggies) are pretty good, I made some last night. They use too much butter/oil, it's really heavy and it overpowers a lot of the other tastes but that's probably because the rest of the tastes are pretty weak. I also got some waffles and other breakfast items, I'm going to try to eat breakfast if I can. Junk food is not the way to start the day.

Something video wise is going out in my linux box. There are horizontal lines that move around and dark patches and the whites are sorta gray now. It's not the monitor because I'm on a switchbox with my winders box and it looks fine. Maybe I bumped a cable somewhere.

Apparently there is a Starbucks opening across the way in the shopping center about 1000 yards from my condo. Leanne says she's going to get a job there and work an extra 10-20 hours a week on top of her normal 50+ hours/week at the office. She claims she's bored and needs stuff to do. How is it that the rest of us don't have that problem? I guess because once she leaves work, she stops working. We on the other hand have tons of stuff to do and never actually quit. Maybe she can scope out women for me while she's working? :)

I got the Miata smogged, it passed just fine. Now I should make an appointment at the DMV. What fun my life is.

Saturday I helped Jim move into his new house. It's a 12 year old, 1700 sq. ft. place with a 3 car garage down in Gilroy. It was $450k, but it dropped to $400k when he finally got done bargaining. Housing has finally started to drop. I wonder if I could get something with a garage?

After moving Jim, I went and helped K5 sand her deck. We're not a couple anymore, but I can still be friendly. She had to stain it herself today and it took 6 hours. I saw it when I went to pick up the Montero and the rest of my stuff. Looks like she did an OK job, it should hold up for a few years.

The big event of today was the Raiders game vs. the Dallas Cowboys. The Raiders won 28 to 21. I only watched some of the game, I really don't care much for football. I talked with the EMC sales guy for almost an entire quarter. Dad really had fun walking around on the field before the game. He used to have season tickets to the games and never thought he would find himself standing next to the bench. Unfortunately my camera is really slow to focus and shoot and by the time he said "take a picture of that guy" it was too late. Hence the large number of pictures of people's backs or of random nothing, I was too late.

At the management meeting this morning, they detailed out how rice boy pulled out of the parking lot last night and *bam!* slammed right into the side of one of the engineers in his new Porsche 911. Oops. Riceboy was in his wife's 4-door civic instead of his riced up one (it was in the shop as they tried to fake it through smog, it's totally not smog legal... I can hear him on the phone talking about it now).

I think I'm going to go to the driving range now for a little bit before the crowds get there. I'll come back and work late tonight, it's not like I have a life now.

I did make it to the driving range. I can still sorta hit the ball, it's not like I'll have to start completely over. That's good. My hits didn't have that satisfying feel or sound, they were pretty crude, but I think it will pick back up fast.

I went to the coffee shop and read tonight. It was pretty freaky, I'm back to driving a red miata and hanging out in the coffee shop reading. It's like the last 12 or so months haven't really happened and I've been frozen somewhere. My mind set is a little different, I'm older, I hurt more, but I'm still right back where I started. Do I get to keep the experiences or will they fade too? Even Michele is back in communications with me again. I could go right back to the same woman I was with 12 months ago too. How strange.

The counter bimbo was wearing a pit pass band and when I asked her about it she said that she had been to an autocross. I thought that was cool, a cute chick at an autocross. Maybe the sport is becoming respectable? :)

I've updated the picture index on the main page to reflect the last 9 camera dumps I've made. I was looking for the deck pictures (Ed and I were comparing decks) and couldn't find them. I put the new miata pictures up there; the color is way off as the seats look red but they're not. Just glare I guess.

I got two of the netapps guys to sign up for the psycho class with me. I won't be alone. They want to go the range next weekend as well to check out my M3 and to sight in their rifles for the class. If I'm not careful, I could actually make some friends out of this. I'm liking that idea a lot.

Leanne is home, she scared the crap out of me coming in really quietly. I thought she was gone for the weekend. Anyway, looks like people are banging on the doors of pong trying to break in. I've turned on some more logging and so far managed to catch one guy going FTP attacks, and myself using ssh. Apparently my IP doesn't resolve correctly. No big shock there, I'm using @home, they're not too bright.

So the cat is out of the bag, everyone now knows that K5 and I have broken up. The short form of the story is that she wants kids, I do not. I tried to see her side of things, but the constant pressure to 'give in' and do the kid thing is starting to get to me (or was getting to me, now it doesn't since the relationship is gone). It's a tragic loss, I really, really like her. Not much I can do about my damage now. I won't dwell.

Gary from EMC stopped by and dropped of the Raiders tickets. He got us seats in their fancy luxury box as well as a parking permit and apparently there are some field passes as well so we can go onto the field before the game. Yes, I will take my camera. Now I probably wish I had something better, maybe I should borrow Kevin's 990? Too late I suppose, it's almost Friday already. I still don't give a crap about football, I'm only going so I can take my dad. He's never been in a luxury box before (I have, several times so I know it's cool). If I get more tickets (Joe may not go and give up us 4) I'll probably invite Leanne along since she does care about football. And hey, she still owes me rent for the month and it's already the 4th. Humph.

The biggest cool news of the day was from Doug. He 'forgot' that the miata also has a hard top! Yes, that's right, a $1000 hard top was sitting in his garage and he gave it to me free (since it came with the car). Wow, what a treat! I picked it up today and it was flawless (having just sat in the garage for years). We put a small scratch in it getting it through the gate (doh!) but we got it on the car with minimal fuss. It clips on pretty easy and does quiet things down about 30%. The front (of course) weather stripping is sorta weak so it leaks air and whistles at 80mph. It will probably leak water too so I'll have to fix that but who cares? I paid the current going rate for a used hard top (they go for $1k on the miata list all the time) and got a free car. Or I sell the top and just keep the free car (no way). Either way, it's a total win for me. I need to win every so often.

One of the psycho training people is coming from Montana to CA to do some classes in the Bay Area. They're all during the week, which sucks, but at least they are close. I've already taken the pistol stuff as well as the carbine stuff, but they offer a bolt-gun class that is also suitable for lever actions. It's over a Sunday-Monday so I signed up. I'm going to take my Winchester Model 94 and take the scope off and run with that. It's all urban work (think 100 yards or less) and includes some sniper stuff. Woohoo, doing urban combat and sniping with a gun designed in 1894. None of that modern 'assault rifle' stuff for me. :) Unlike the photo, mine has a Pachmyer recoil pad on it (professionally installed by a gun smith). The 30-30 isn't exactly a punishing caliber, but I'm a wimp.

Another sign I am a manager, I just put in a new position request thingy into the system. We're hiring another Unix admin to take up some of the slack now that I'm useless in a technical role anymore (or so people say). I'm going to a class on how to interview on the 11th, looks like I'll get to put that into practice real soon. I suck at interviewing as it is now, I hope the class has a lot of good info in it.

I have to go to the dentist today at 3pm. I hate the dentist but I've gone 3 times now in the last two years (every 6 months) so I'm getting over some of my fears. They use this numbing agent on me so I can't feel anything. Yes, I need this even for a cleaning.

I failed to actually get the camera to focus on the peas rather than the ground, but here you can sorta see the first batch of peas from the garden. We're farming for real here now people!

All I will say is "DOH!". That's enough comment about work.

I guess some good did come out of the day, I did the Canadian's review. I must be a real manager now. He wasn't expecting a raise. What's the purpose of a review if you don't get a raise? The only other reason is that you're a slacker and getting fired I guess. He's worked for the government too long.