stripethree

I’ve been slacking on the blog front, mainly because February has been extremely busy. Work has been hectic for two reasons, the first being upcoming deadlines on the project I am working on and the metric ton of work that needs to be completed before those deadlines come and go. Second, I’ve been figuring out the ins and outs of a work transition, as it is more than 95% certain at this point I will no longer be working from home starting next month. I am changing projects, changing teams, and changing what I do on a daily basis from a software engineering focus to a software vulnerability testing and evaluation focus. So I’ll be driving to the fort in Sierra Vista everyday, but I have the chance to learn and participate in some very interesting and cool (as in nerdy cool) things and get sent to all sorts of fun (as in nerdy fun) courses such as ethical hacker training. So I’m excited, but I have been very busy organizing things and getting as much done with my current work as I can before the transition.

Besides that, there was the SSCC autocross on the 3rd, which I did ok, sort of. Apparently there were some issues with the radios and the course and a lot of course deviations did not get called in and recorded, on my runs included. So I have no idea how I actually faired since I know my times on the results probably aren’t right. In addition, I had some battery with my camera issues so the in car video I thought I took didn’t really come out well. I did get some good pictures with my XTi. This has lead to design thoughts on a way to secure the charger to have it in the car running off the 12v power adapter. On the other hand, I have taken a step into further involvement with the Tucson folks and have designed a course which we will be using at the February event next weekend. It took some time and some input from other members, and of course, approval of the design for safety and feasibility, but hopefully it will be fun to run next Sunday. I’ll post the map with my usual post event ramblings.

Last weekend Summer and I spend the weekend in Bisbee, which is a small town about 90 miles southeast of Tucson. Bisbee was a copper town before the mines were shut down in the 1970s and now sort of straddles the border of a small arts community and an old west ghost town.

We went down on Saturday, attended the annual Chocolate Tasting, and stayed at the Gym Club Suites. The suites building was originally a YMCA, then was converted to an apartment building, and now is a hotel. The loft we got was excellent and had a small balcony with a nice view of most of the town.

On Sunday we walked around ‘downtown’ and checked out the shops and sights. We also went on a tour of the Queen Copper mine and rode down the tracks over 1000 feet into the mine, 600 feet underground. I didn’t bring the camera on the tour because I had no idea how rough the ride would be and how much possibility there was for the camera to get damaged. After all, before we got on the rail cars we were outfitted in bright yellow jackets and hard hats along with battery packs hooked up to lights. Let me tell you how flattering that outfit wasn’t.

Yesterday I dropped by the Tucson Animal Fair which Summer was working at, which provided some good photo ops.

It was basically a mass gathering of animal rescue shelters and services located in and around Tucson ranging from breed specific rescue foundations, to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, to various dog agility and dancing (yes, dancing) classes/groups.

That’s all for now, next stop: New Orleans with Summer and 5 of the Maryland VW kids. Louisiana has no idea what it is in for.