n8 foo

Eddy had a Birthday this Friday. Went to a gun range, got some dinner at Fidels, got accused of breaking and entering when I went to the bathroom at the 7-11, and watched motorcycle videos at Stan's afterwards. It was a good time.

The pic to the left is cruzing in Webb's bling bling at 2:49am.

Happy B-Day Eddy!

Go away.
And don't come back.

...FLASH FLOOD WARNING CONTINUES UNTIL 100 PM...

What is up with this liquid falling from the sky? I pay my taxes, work my ass off to pay for the high cost of living, turn a deaf ear to the masses of liberal idiots, bring back the sun! What do I live in SoCal for anyhow? I mean, I realize it's 'winter' now, but dude, I'd rather have a foot of snow. At least the people that grew up back east know how to drive. Damn. It spits rain here and there are a dozen accidents filling up the freeways. You can't do 85 in the rain pal.

I didn't get any sleep last night because my new house has this totally sweet feature...when the wind blows hard, it spins the exhaust vents on my roof so fast that they oscillate...and set up a vibration in my house that slowly varies in frequency from one minute to the next. That's because it only oscillates and causes the vibration at very high RPM...but once it starts oscillating, it causes friction and slows down. So there are 0.5-1 sec periods of silence as it spins up to infinity, and then the oscillation/vibration slows it back down. And it's LOUD. No sleep for me!

Add to that the TJ shack my mexican neighbors are building...it's made of thin metal. That thing was slapping around all night and morning. Not a wink I tells ya!

Not related to the weather, but related to not sleeping, at 7am this morning about 100 police trainees came running by my house yelling some violent cadence at the top of their lungs. It was so loud, I thought that they were fighting in my living room. I sprang from the bed to see what was the mater, only to find myself standing in my front door, in my boxers, in front of 100 sweaty soon-to-be policemen...who I believe all looked at me and promptly committed my address to memory. Super.

I hate to be one of those bloggers that blogs the news.

But if you haven't seen it, Firefox is raising money for an ad in the NY times. What a great idea, that is so cool! The pic at right is from work and you can see the Firefox poster that I picked up at LinuxWorld. I put it on the front entrance to our suite. Makes sense for 'web server admin' to be Firefox advocates. :) I'm just stunned at how popular Firefox became....so fast. 5 million downloads! I've been using it since the alpha days of Firebird, but I'm so happy to see that the Internet at large is picking up on it.

"Firefox is increasingly becoming the browser of choice for people fed up with spyware and other internet annoyances." Haha, no way, really? Fed up with spyware and ads? Who isn't? And yesterday, yet another CERT was released for "Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer". What else is new. They should just put up a big siren that goes off when there are no bugs in IE.

If you're currently using Firefox, I highly recommend you check out the Web Developer, LiveHTTPHeaders, Sage RSS and IEView extensions. They have made my life as a geek so much easier.

I don't believe it. My little brother met Ron Jeremy before I did? Now what's left for me to do? I mean, now, I have to be in a video with him or something. And that's gonna be a lot harder.

Live Mount St. Helens Volcano Cam

Link thanks to Wil Wheaton, a stand up guy and fellow blogger.

"...and mine says Desert Eagle .50".

Went to the gun range tonight with Sean. Met up with Matt while I was there too.

I got to shoot an assortment of weapons:
Para P14, CZ-52, CZ-75B, CZ-95B, Desert Eagle 44Mag, Desert Eagle 50 Cal, Ruger 10/22, Glock 9mm Open Class and a Ruger 610 Revolver.

The Desert Eagle .50 will put hair on your chest, that's for sure. I mean look at the size of the rounds! I shot it only 3 times and on the third round, my hand was bright red! I fully expected it to be like the movies where it throws you back, but it wasn't. Just had a helluva kick. Made firing the 45 easy. The CZ-52 also had quite a kick (due to the sub-machine rounds it fires) but it felt good in my hand and was pretty fun to fire. Of all the guns I shot, I liked the Para P14 and the Desert Eagle 44Mag the best. The DE weighs like 5lb so it actually absorbed the kick of the 44Mag really well...and just felt great to hold. The Glock 9mm Open Class was rad but I don't really have enough experience firing to tell the difference between a $500 model and a $2500 model.

A fun time, glad I went. /me does a google search for the H&K USP 45ACP

Sunday, Karl, Eddy, Dave and I went down to Coronado for the Speed Festival. It's like a mini-monterey, but not nearly as far or costly. Eddy, in his new Z3 Coupe, met up with Karl and I in the 2002 at Dave's place in OB. We grabbed some food and cash at a local deli and hit the road. One giant bridge and 30 minutes later, we were at the North Island Naval Base parking next to $150k cars.

A nice guy actually gave us 2 free tickets on the way in, which totally made our day! Half price! But then we found out they didn't allow outside food. What the heck is up with that? So we scarfed down the sandwiches while standing outside the gates. Karl was stopped by the metal detectors for his cans of soda but was able to slide them past security using well known Jedi Mind Trick...it works well on guards apparently.

The racing was really good! Since it was a flat course on the runway, we saw nearly the whole event and all of the action of the race, with the exception of a bit of course blocked by the other set of grandstands. It was great to watch the cars with big engines overtake in the straights but get whipped around the corners. Karl and I were disappointed when our pick, the Alfa, didn't compete in race 7, but Dave's pick, the McLaren, killed in the first few laps. But it lost it's grip, or breaking or something because it slowed so much that it was dead last, then rolled off the track and didn't finish the race. D-oh! The last race of the day, race 8, was TransAm, with giant muscle cars from the 60's and little 2 liter BMW's and Alfa's. The BMW's held their own against the cars with 3 times the displacement.

I put up my pics of the event here. It was a good time, I'll definatly go next year.

Today, Arne, GeekD, Jim, Neil, Jason, Eddy, Karl and I met up for lunch at the Pizza Port in Encinitas. I am not sure what alignment of planets caused this, but for some reason, that place was stoked beyond belief. A birthday party for kids = large group of MILF's. Add 3 different groups of cute girls. And the waitress was cute. It was basicly lunch with a ton of cute girls and us bunch of geeks. I mean, really, that was a good end to an overly hard week.

Rode up in Eddy's new car, the Z3 Coupe. That is a tight little ride, I'm jealous.

Links of the day:

Bullets with Barcodes??
Mount St Helens Photo Gallery
The Straight Dope: Premium vs Regular Gas

Lots of posts today! So I am leaving work and find my old RX-7 parked right next to me. It turns out that after I sold the car to Fred, he got a job as a consultant BREW QA tester for Qualcomm. So on occassion, I see the twin turbo R1 beauty. Fred has modified it quite a bit, added a lot of chrome under hood goodies, new suspension, 18" wheels and a new crazy looking carbon fiber hood. I generall prefer the original style of the car, but it does look pretty cool I must say.

I will own one again one day. Or maybe the new RX-7 when it comes out. Or maybe a Lotus.

Now this is rad! Make google queries from your phone with SMS. And it totally works too. I typed in 'pizza port 92126' and got back the full listing for the Pizza Port in Solana Beach, but just what I needed: The name, address and phone number. No ads, nothing. Check out the wallet size reference card. The web page is more in depth, but the short of it is that you can look up item prices, business and personal phone numbers, dictionary definitions, google search snippits, use the google calculator and get area code and zip code lookups. This rocks!

Also, today's APOD is awesome.

Saw two hummingbirds outside work today. Pretty neato! I haven't really seen any since I moved to CA. It's good to know the little things still exist. They were drinking the nectar of the large square of flowering weeds that grows outside the east side of my building.

In 7th grade, my brother did an experiment to determine what type of food to feed your backyard humming birds. He did different ratios of sugar to water and compared colored water to non-colored water. I forget the ratio that was the best, but they definatly preferred the non-colored water. The 4 post flower style feeder was the most popular as well.

Know what that big needle is? It's Lidocaine. Yep, I went to the dentist for the first time since...maybe 1997...most likely 1995. Tracy and her perfect teeth maintenance schedule guilted me into it. I used to really hate going to the dentist when I was younger. But, this was not an unpleasant experience.

My Dad gave me some good advice: Large athletic male types (like my doc as a kid) don't make good dentists...they have huge hands. And I have a small mouth (I guess). So I followed Tracy's advice and went to her dentist, a petite asian woman. Small hands. Better experience!

I only had 2 cavities, one due to a badly installed filling and the other very minor. In addition she pulled my old silver fillings and put in new white ones made of an composite resin. They also won't expand and contract with hot and cold foods. I went in at 8AM, left at 10AM. I don't have to come back for 6 months. Now, that is service.

If anyone else is interested, her shop is called TransDental Family Care and it's in Mira Mesa, near the Hollywood Video and Baja Fresh. She's good and she's nice. Tell her Nathan sent you.

P.S. I bought a box of Butterfingers from Costco to celebrate. Shh!