What'd you say bout beer?
Man, I really do like beer.
Tonight, I made a 12:15 run to Albertsons to pick up some Dos Equis and a bottle of water for Tracy. But they changed hours (again) without posting signs or anything and had closed by 12. So I went next door to Longs, open 24 hours. But they couldn't sell past 11 because they're within 100ft of a residential area. And Jimbo's Liquor, my next destination, was closed. AM/PM only has domestic piss. So Ralph's was my last bet. They are open till 2, stock the beer, and can sell till 2. AND they have Shiner Bock. My favorite beer. Wow, all that work just for a sip of the stuff?
God-damn straight. I like beer.* :)
*Not domestic swill.
a nice weekend
A nice, lazy, weekend. Too damn short. Saturday, Tracy and I went up to Del Mar to eat at Board & Brew. Sunday, we went on a Hornblower Cruise. Pretty fun. Got to see this gnarly 140 foot sailboat from New Zealand. And the USS Midway was down at the harbor too, getting prepped to open as a museum attraction on June 6th. Only $13!
Got the Sysadmin Happy Hour pics up. That sure was fun. We were missing a few ppl, but for the most part, everybody showed. Good times.
Found out that Obie works at ADN, where UnixMechanix keeps it's servers. I need to get him a job at QC, he doesn't like it at ADN and he's a smart dude.
Found a really great link on how to install dual carbs in my Fiat: here. Looks like a lot of work.
..Speaking of which, I so don't want to go to work tomorrow.
Interesting reading: http://tjsplace.blogspot.com/
I suck at this
Guess I'm just bad at blogging. Whatever. I'm still working on it.
So, some neato stuff that's popped up on my e-mail or IM's lately:
Seinfeld and Superman together at last
Getting a few new people in my group at work. That's good, we've been needing them.
Bought a house, I move in the first week of July. Yay. Hope the market continues to do well.
Last night was the Sysadmin Happy Hour. Lots of peeps showed. It was the bomb.
New weblog
Well, hopefully I can keep THIS log updated. Livejournal was suckin ass as a blogger and I like blogger.com better anyway.
I am a lame journal type person
But, to make up for it, I am submitting these friendster freaks:
http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=2405451 http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=2486135 http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=2567972 http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=2243327 http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=1245519 http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=1951655 http://www.friendster.com/user.jsp?id=1730675
If they're not in your network, you should be my friend!
So, let's see what's changed since I last posted...um....
Job: I'm full-time now. Yay. Things are good.
Tracy: Over a year. We celebrated by going up to Big Bear for the weekend. It's freaky though...EXACTLY one year to the day from when we met (in the hospital, Tracy taking care of me), I was taking care of her in the ER. Guess she got some sort of kidney infection. Woke up that morning at 5AM freaking out, and we flew about 100mph down La Jolla Village Drive in the RX-8 to the hospital. She turned out fine and we continued on the trip later that day. But freaky what a conincidence it was. I don't even want to guess at the implications of that.
Cars: After a lot more work, I got the Fiat running again. Rebuilt the carb, installed an electronic fuel pump and all new hose lines. Turns out I had burned out the old fuel pump, it had nothing to do with an overheating ignition computer. Then the starter solenoid completely died. So I after pulling the starter for the 3rd time, I got that replaced and it starting correctly again. I ordered some new wheels. Gotta get bolts tho, that's been a chore. I am generally not interested in working on cars right now. Even the 8 is really dirty.
Fires nearly burned down all of So Cal. It came within a half mile of my apartment. Pretty scary that morning to wake up to all that smoke. My step-grandmother was evac'd as her bushes burned, but somehow her house and her daughter's house both survived while the rest of the neighborhood melted to ash.
My old company, MP3.com is finally going away away. Sold the domain to C-Net. It has been gone for a while, but killing the site had yet to be done. Most of my friends that worked there now work for other Vivendi properties, or have found other jobs. I feel lucky to have gotten out when I did.
Went to Sevenstock this year with Sander. Kinda fun, saw some cool rotary cars.
Getting back into Amateur Radio. Pretty much as a directly result of Eddy getting his license and listening to the emergency nets during the fire. It was my first real hobby, and a love I've always had. Too bad I haven't been into it the last 4 years. It's so neat, sending radio signals from a little wire. Anyway, just got a new radio, put up an antenna and am learning morse and studying for my General class license upgrade. Pretty exciting to finally get to where I was hoping to be 10 years ago.
That's all for now. Thanks for the booty kick Judy. Maybe I can start updating this with a bit higher resolution.
Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Introduction-ARRL-Your Introduction To Morse Code
Back in da bidness
OK. So I'm back. Yesh, yesh, I realize it's been a while. I've actually been at my new job for quite a while, almost 3 months. But I haven't posted yet. No laptop. And relaxing with a beer and the laptop was my primary method of journal entry. Waiting on Apple to release the new one.
News:
Job: Qualcomm. Yes, a stable company with lots of money, PROFIT, and 6000 employees. Kinda big, but it's cool because they're a geeky company. My team is pretty great. But it looks like a lot of work ahead of me.
Tracy: Still dating, she rocks. 1 year pretty soon.
Car: Ooh yeah. I got the RX-8. Traded in the Honda (sniff sniff). I had the first one in SoCal by a few days. It's red with red leather. It was such a cool experience. Neil went up with me to the dealer after work one day. We arrived, the car was being guarded by 2 employees in lawn chairs. I almost exploded when I saw it. 2 years. I finally have it. Now, the driving. Oh shit, it is fast. It drives like my RX-7. The driving position, the rotary's smooth accelleration...just like the old twin turbo 7. Wow. And it'll outhandle the 7 with some suspension tweaks. Very sweet. The suicide mini-doors are rad as hell. And the stereo rocks. I'm a superstar with this thing. If I didn't have a girl I'd probably be getting laid because of it. hehe. I love it. Yay.
Computers: Moved the server home, ordered 768k dsl. May run UML linux on the bitch, see how i like it. Laptop arriving soon (hurry up apple!)
Fiat: After a lot of work I actually got the thing running. Took it on it's first highway test drive. It died so I let it cool, turned around and drove it home. Except I didn't make it home. It died on the side of the road and this time wouldn't start. I broke the starter. I have deduced that the reason it didn't start is because the new ignition computer I installed was in a bad location and overheating. An easy fix. But not the starter. So it has sat for a month at least. The RX-8 has taken priority. But I got out today to air up the tires and 'debug' it a little more. I'm going to get to work on it this week. Rebuild the carb, get the starter working again, etc, etc.
Monterey Historics: Rad trip. Arne and Karl were the only 2 besides me this year. Eddy couldn't make it. We took Thursday and did the HWY 1 up to San Simeon, where we stayed in a hotel that night. Went to the Concorsio Italiano that morning. Pretty cool except I bonked my head pretty fucking hard on this Lancia with it's boot up. I dunno what it did but I was pretty zonked out after that. Didn't really take pics for 2 days. We went to the Historics Saturday and Sunday, but I still had a massive headache and little enthusiasm. My feet were killing me and I utilized the handicapped services once. They even picked up Karl and Arne too..but the little buggy could barely make it up the hill to the camp. Camp showers were really nice this year. I took 2 a day, it was sweet.
Umm. Anything else?
I can see the neighbors getting dressed in the window. I'm not peeping, they just have the fuckin lights on and the movement drew my eyes. I should hoot at them.
Trying to get UML to work. They didn't tell you that /proc/mm needs to be turned on. Now it's working.
Till next time.
Current Mood: hungryhungry
Current Music: Server hard disks whirring
dot gone
So, what has happened in the last few weeks. Hmm. Been going to that class provided by MP3 for 'job transition'. Sucks ass to get up at 8am, but it ends this Thursday. Worked on my resume for a full week. Lots of time spent, but now it really rocks. Tracy has been studying for exams so it's worked out so far.
I have been working the interview bit pretty hard. Hit up K-Force and did the quick interview with them to get me in the system and get my resume out to Sony and others. Went to Musicmatch. Pretty cool place, I'd like to work there if it weren't a music company.
Turned in the laptop. That sucked...sat outside the gate waiting like a criminal and finally sneaked in when some sales jerk left. Then I sat inside waiting for security for 20 minutes. Which I guess was good because it gave me time to rm -rf my files. Finally had to go behind the security desk, use the computer to look up the security number on the corporate intranet and have them meet me. Then I left for LA.
Met up with David for about 30 minutes while I ate my quick burger. Wish I could have stayed for a while. But I have to get on over to Matt's place. Very generous of him to put me up for the night...staying with David would have meant drive from hell the next morning from UCLA to Pasadena. I can't believe how lost I got. Probably took me an hour and a half to do a 30 min drive. Driving directions I printed were backwards and my GPS can't hold all of LA so I was kinda stuck. Finally got there about 11:15. I was suprized that he had a spare bed...I was expecting the couch. Very cool. Overture...ugg. Asked me a bunch of syntax memorization questions. Good grief. What is this, 5 years ago? Sounds to me like they've already got plenty of the syntax memorizer sysadmin's, they need innovators like me, which they weren't interviewing for. Plus, I'm not willing to move. Impressive looking NOC ('looking' being the key word). But I must say, if a Carlsbad office were to pop up and I could work with cool people from MP3, I'd be so there. Ate lunch with Marco...cool guy. Left for home right after that and got stuck in LA traffic. Took me 3.5 hours to do a 2 hour drive. Yuck. I really hate LA.
Looking forward to Sony interview this week and possibly Copper Mountain.
Went to Neil's thing for his daughter. Pretty cool. Lots of co-workers there. It's really good to see my friends. I miss em a lot...will have to do lunch this week or something.
Worked on my fiat web page. Guess that's about it. Till next time.
Current Mood: anxiousanxious
Current Music: !k7-studio - Terrence Parker - Play-ah Hater
Vacation, yay!
I'm wrapping things up at work since I am taking off tomorrow and Friday to do San Diego stuff with Tracy. Yay. We're actually going to go up to Disneyland, since neither of us have been, probably go to balboa park, then the beach. Should be nice. Guess I'll know soon. Oops, don't want to forget to look up Disneyland park times/etc.
Need to make reservations for the flight home for Molly's wedding, or not. I do want to go, but at the same time, I don't. Aaah, parents and family, so much fun. hehe.
Started the Fiat yesterday...leaked some oil from the exhaust manifold. Talked to Carlos at ITAL and he said it could be a stud that's loose. So I'll check that out later.
Ran into Jason R. today. He's a cool guy. Ate lunch with him at UTC mall.
Not much else, it's a nice day.
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: dave's festering gob
Done!
So I saw another Fiat on the road last week. Turned around, followed and exchanged contact info. He sent me an e-mail with some info about his local mechanic and places to get parts. Turns out there is a local Fiat specialist guys, Carlos at ITAL Automotive. Sweet, so I called him up, and ordered a steering box. I went down to pay for it and he says 'what day was your car manufactured, because the steering boxes changed in 1973'. Shit, I dunno. So I went back the next day with the old box in hand, orderd the new one. Got it the next day, Friday for $200. Not bad. Installed it on Saturday, and on Sunday, I put the whole thing back together. Clutch cable, intake manifold, carb and various other hoses and cables. Started it up last night at 10:59. Yay. Gonna go home today and test drive it, park it, and do all the fluids. Happy!
Tracy and I are taking a little vacation this next week. I am taking Thursday and Friday off and we're gonna go to Disneyland, etc. Maybe the beach, probably Balboa park Museums, etc. Should be fun. I'm excited.
Forgot to take care of my ticket for no plates and illegal race tires. Gotta do that today. :(
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: the silence of a keyboard clattering
Good weekends make for bad Monday's
Friday night, Eddy and I drove up to Laguna Nigel in his new truck. We picked up the SL600, he payed the former owner for the truck and picked up the bed and a few other things. I got to drive the SL600 back down to Escondido. What a nice car. Whew. On the way bak down to San Diego ,we stopped in that same little town where Karl and I stopped for coffee on the way back from the LA Car Show. We had some pizza in an Italian joint with really cute waitresses. I burnt the roof of my mouth on the first bite of pizza. hehe. I actually got home about 10 min after Tracy which was quite abnormal. Hehe.
Saturday, when Tracy got back from class, we went down to Balboa Park and walked around in the cactus gardens. Took a few cool photo's and tried to stay out of the shadows. It got cold all of a sudden. Someone had dumped some soap in the fountain and it was spewing foam. Jerk offs. That night we had some italian food and watched Sweet Home Alabama. It was a kinda lame flick.
Sunday, we were just lazy, hung around home. While Tracy studied for her exam, I went out and started the Fiat, drove it around for a while in the parking lot across from the apartment. I am kind of bummed at all the things that this car needs to have done to it. Steering, suspension, brakes, ignition, electrical, dash replacement, paint, new wheels/tires, coolant hoses and probably a tranny rebuild. Makes me want something else, something in a little bit better condition. So I spent a portion of the day looking at 240z's and other cars that fit the bill. Went out to eat steak that night. Good stuff. Good weekend. I like the lazy ones.
Today on the way to work, I made a lane change that was immediately followed by some person in a Mitsubishi coming over in my lane. She would have hit me if I hadn't swerved into the left lane and cut off this guy in a truck. Then the guy in the truck follows me and bitches me out. Jeez. It wasn't my fault. Good morning to you too a**hole.
Neil sends me a pics of a few NSX's that showed up at his BMW meet this weekend. Badness. I still love that car.
Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: Groove Salad: a nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves. [SomaFM]