BLOGS FOR SEPTEMBER 2007

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Week ending September 30th, 2007
Been such a busy week at work. I've been assigned three very important projects that have a high profile within the company. So much so that I have to take a couple days off and work from home so I can get the documentation completed in time. The good thing is the lab has been very good about getting my equipment ready. I also received my NASE and NACE certifications from NetApp on Friday so I am very excited about that. Have to go get them framed :)

Over the weekend I headed down to OC to get a haircut, washed my truck and stopped off to pick up my chain and sprockets that were inadvertently delivered to my old address. While I was there I found out my old place has already been rented out and there's a couple living there. My old neighbor, Mike, said that the guy is an off roader and works in the garage as much as I used to. He joked about my old hood being a wrencher's place and he's right :) All of us had one project or another going on all the time.

I stopped by and attended Saddleback's Saturday service while I was there. It was good to see Pastor Clayton. He was surprised to see me and we did get to chat for a while. He asked about my life and how my new place is, etc. I also got to see many of my friends who I haven't seen in a while. I even got invited on a sailboat ride in Newport Beach for the next day but already had plans.

Speaking of which, I got up early today, made a big egg/pancake breakfast and started tearing into the RR. I've been ignoring the bike since I didn't race last month. But it looks like I'll be racing twice in October starting next weekend at Streets then two weeks later at the Big Track. My goal right now is just to get smoother and stop worrying about where I finish in the standings.

Speaking of bikes, I got a look at the 2008 1000RR. I was all set to buy the bike and then meh, it's ugly. I actually like the look of the 1098 but just can't bare to buy a V-Twin. I'd rather have all my teeth pulled with a pair of pliers than buy a wannabe Harley :) haha. I do really like what Yamaha did with the 2008 R6 so that's a possibility, or I will just sell the 05 and get an 08.

One rant I did want to get off my chest is the drivers in OC! They don't seem to do this here in San Diego. Why, when there is a ton of room behind me and I am pulling a trailer do people in OC feel the need to gun it to get in front of me and exit right away instead of pulling in behind me, where there is plenty of room and they aren't force to hurry their exit? That happened several times in OC. Maybe people in OC just don't like trailers? lol.

Anyway, that's pretty much my week. Lots of other stuff going on too. I was going to talk about being hit on at the grocery store but, lol, I'm not into married women. You ladies with rings need to behave! HAHA.

Have a great week!!!

Week ending September 23th, 2007
Heh, another great week. Sometimes I look up in amazement and wonder what I have done to deserve such good fortune, ya know? Anyway, not much to report this week (that I can talk about) so I will try and keep it short.

Friday I was at the gym and made my way over the the "Smith" machine area. There was guy there, probably about 6' and 220lbs. He was dead lifting 305lbs and being coached by an older guy who turned out to be a former Olympic trainer. Well I walked over to an area not far away and started doing my dead lifts (235lbs). As I am doing my first set the trainer looks over at me and says "Hey, how much do you weigh?" I reply "160lbs." He smiles and says "That's very, very good. 75lbs over your body weight. And not only are you lifting a lot, you're also lifting correctly. Look around. There's 100 people in this gym and yet only two of you are doing dead lifts. That should tell you something. You're both smart lifters! I've seen a ton of guys in here but only you two actually lift the correct way."

What a nice compliment. He went on to explain that he used to train people for the Olympics and now works as a personal trainer. He didn't seem to be joshing me to get business because, though he introduced himself, he didn't offer his information. He just said "Have a good weekend!" when he left. So that was good to have someone else notice the hard work I've been doing at the gym. I'm still lifting on a regular schedule, taking the whey protein and working as hard as I can.

Overall the week at work was good. Very, very busy. In fact I had to take Thursday off and work from home so I could finish up my documents. It gets hard to complete them at work because I am constantly interrupted (in good ways).

I still haven't made it back to OC to pick up my parts for the RR. I plan on racing in early October and getting in a Saturday practice. Then I may go ahead and race a few weeks later as well. I need more seat time on the RR and the only way to get it is to get off my duff.

Hope you had a great weekend. I sure did :) Talk to you next week.

Week ending September 16th, 2007
Work has been going phenomenal, each week bettering the week before. I had my review on Friday as our boss was in town from Oklahoma. He said I was doing a great job and then assigned me two very large projects that are going to have high visibility within the company. On top of that, I made a suggestion in regards to how our engineering documentation could be modified to make it a lot easier when we make changes. This would basically cut down necessary paperwork for each project by four times over. The current main project I am working on is going to act as the pilot for the new documentation process and if it works out well, it will be implemented across all of our SAN documentation. NEAT!

This weekend was the Toyota 200 at Willow Springs so I did not go racing. Too crowded and too much going on so I felt it would be better to kick back and work on the 600RR. I have a new chain and sprockets to install that will lower my gearing even more. When I went to the 190 rear tire it's so much taller that when I raced last month I had a hard time adjusting. I will probably try the new setting at Streets in early October as I am very interested in trying that track out.

Let's do another "conversation" as this one took place earlier in the week:

T=Them
M=Me

T: "Hey, wanna go to a nudie bar?"
M: "Uhh no thanks."
T: "Why not? If you say because you don't like them, ok. If you say because it's against your morals, you're being religious and that's just stupid."
M: "Excuse me? My faith and my morals play a big part in it. But it's not just that. If you want to sit around in a dingy bar tossing dollars to women, that's your business. Has nothing to do with me."
T: "Dude, you're being lame."
M: "I don't need to justify myself to anyone."
T: "What the big deal? You don't like women?"
B: "Sure I do. Love them. I just don't think it's right and I prefer class."
T: "Come on dude, they're all plasticed up!"
M: "All the more reason to skip it. I've got better uses for my money..."

Not sure what the attraction is for them to hit the nudie bars. I've never been interested. Maybe it's because not only is not moral or ethical, it's just never been appealing to me to sit around, drink beer and gawk at women who throw their self-respect out the window. More power to you if that floats you boat.

Speaking of morals and ethics, Church was great on Saturday. We had a guest Pastor as Pastor Bob was in Australia this week. I forget his name already but he was great. He is from North Carolina and it was one of the better sermons I've heard. We're still outside in the Courtyard and yep, the Hot Air Balloons are still flying by :)

I have been going out more often and those who know me best know what's going in that department right now. As I said, some things will never make this page. :)

Other than that the week was fairly uneventful. I got to sit around today and watch the Bucs totally destroy the Saints. That made up for the terrible game last weekend. I was supposed to play golf today but haven't been feeling exceptional since that Chinese lunch on Thursday. haha.

The major decision I am sitting on right now is what to do with the Bandit. As much fun as I had building that bike, I am seriously considering selling it now that it's paid off. I've had my eye on a new litrebike and if the rumors of the 2008 CBR1000RR are true, I may go ahead and buy one. One that I can do track days with or I may go ahead and buy a 2008 600RR and sell my '05. I'm trying to figure out what would be best. It's not really the bike that is holding me back on the track and since my ride to work is so short now riding a litrebike to work wouldn't be bad at all.

Have a great week and I'll talk to you later...

Cheers :)

Week ending September 9th, 2007
One of the most interesting parts of my job as a SAN Engineer is writing technical documents. And when I say technical documents, I mean a slew of them. There are usually 8 different documents required every time I create a solution. When I am done with the engineering I usually have to spend several days writing the documentation for Management's approval. The way it works is each solution has to go to a review board after Information Audit scans them for possible exploits into the system. Neat! If you don't pass a scan you have to explain the vulnerabilities. In other words, you better do a good job!

All of last week was spent updating the documents for three separate solutions and then attend a review board on one of them (which was approved, by the way).

On Thursday the blood mobile was here so I decided to go ahead and donate. I haven't done it since the late 90s. I don't remember it taking so much out of me but it did. One thing I noticed was that the people running this blood mobile were very experienced. One guy was donating red blood cells so they had a centrifuge there and you could see the red blood cells being separated from the plasma. When it was done, they gave him his plasma back. Pretty neat stuff!

On Friday after work the group wanted to meet up for dinner so I showed up late because Mon/Wed/Fri are my workout days. I probably should have skipped the work out too because I was didn't have much energy and had to skip the dead lifts and reverse lifts. It's ok, I still got a decent work out in. But we hung out for a while, I had the fish and chips and pretty much laughed at the guys gawking at some "tattoed" up Hawaii girl. Hey go for it -- not my style. I've never thought tattoos were attractive. (No offense if you got 'em...)

So let's talk about Sunday. I have been waiting nine months for this day. Anyone who knows me knows that I am huge NFL fan, Buccaneers, ya know? I watched all 4 preseason games and the team looked great. The season opener rolls around today and I get settled in for a long day of Football. After watching the Green Bay/Philadelphia game the Bucs were next. The first quarter was great and then the team just fell flat, eventually losing 20-6. LOL. I'm thinking "I waited all year for THIS?!" If Jon Gruden doesn't get this team in shape soon he'll be out of a job.

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful. Church on Sat night of course and a couple other things. Like I said before, we can't expose every single aspect of our life online so some things are never going to make it to the blog :)

Speaking of which, this blog was created as a way for my family and close friends to keep up to date with what's going on in my life. Originally I was going to post rants and raves on here as well, but who really cares about my opinion? HAHA. I learned a long time ago that "silence is a friend who will never betray." That's one of the reasons why I don't frequent message boards anymore. They usually end up bickering like a bunch of chickens. Who's got time for that?

Ok! Now that summer is over, fall is here and winter soon approaches, I am going to work on my snowboard. I need new bindings and I plan on making at least 2-3 trips to Mammoth this year. Besides, I haven't really had a chance to test the 4WD out on the Tundra and snow is the main reason I bought the thing.

That's it for now. See you next week!

Week ending September 2nd, 2007
What a busy week. On Tuesday I headed up to Irvine Valley College to take my NetApp certifications. I had studied a lot and taken a few classes and wasn't really 100% sure how I would do on the exams. It's been a long time since I'd been in a college classroom or taken a test. It actually made me think about finishing up my degree since I'm not that far off.

Anyway, I decided I was going to go for both the NACP and NACE certifications (getting both certifications essentially makes you a NetApp expert). That required me to take four exams. I started at 10 am and finished around 2 pm - and aced them all :)

So now my value goes up considerably at work since I am now qualified to have the job - haha. Next up will be my EMC certifications which are a tad harder. But my boss said that once I pass the next exam I can pretty much write my own ticket as far as salary and stuff. He thinks I will eventually make twice what I am making now. If true that will definitely help out next year when I go house shopping in earnest.

We did lose a member of our team this week but that was his own undoing. I certainly wish him the best of luck and hope he can get his life straightened out.

The rest of the week was uneventful. I was supposed to go to track day tomorrow at Streets but that didn't pan out. There are a couple other ones I can go to so I'll probably sign up next week.

Saturday morning I walked down to the beach. I posted some photos so you can get an idea of how nice the area is that I live in now. They were taken with my cell phone so you'll have to excuse the quality. It's really clean and quiet, people pick up after themselves, there's no trash, etc. The way the beach is situated here you have to walk down one street over to cross the railroad tracks then go down some steps. There's a 40 foot cliff all along the beach and the beach itself is short. The waves are nice though and there were a lot of surfers enjoying themselves. There was even one guy on a log (log is surfer talk for a really long board) who had a paddle and would stand up on his board and paddle out then surf back. He never got down on his stomach. Pretty interesting to say the least.

Since tomorrow is Labor Day I think I'll head out for a ride up to Palomar and then go to the beach and get some sun. I'm as white as a ghost and still a tad red from Saturday but not too bad. That's what I get for walking around shirtless without any sunscreen (haha).

I did get a chance to watch the MotoGP races today. All I can say is Nicky is having about the worst luck imaginable and everything is going Casey Stoner's way. If this keeps up he will be crowned champion at the next race. Too bad it took Honda so long to sort out the 800. I do know that Honda is a tad hard-headed when it comes to admitting they might not have gotten things right the first time.

Church was awesome as always on Saturday night. We've been having services outside in the Courtyard. I will say all the hot air balloons that float by make it difficult to focus at times but we have an entertaining (and funny) Pastor so the message isn't lost by any means.

That's about it for now.

On my way out the door to hang with a friend. Have a good week and I'll check in with you later.

Cheers!