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.

Nothing to do with the seasons either.

About ten minutes after I took that photo yesterday I discovered that both the front springs had decided they didn’t want to participate in being a part of my car anymore and were attempting to flee by backing out of the lower strut perches. Not my favorite discovery 120 miles from home when I planned on autocrossing. Needless to say I did not run but I did get home fine and the car is in the shop now. Many thanks to all the SSCC folks for their concern, their help, and even their offers to co-drive numerous cars.

I did discover the ambiance of super rural Arizona. Look up Douglas on a map and you’ll see about where this site was; Bisbee Douglas International Airport to be exact. I needed gas and had to drive about 7 miles from the site to the end of 191 (and the United States for that matter) to find something other than ‘Bob’s Gas’. An interesting experience to say the least.

T’was a busy weekend and was happy with things I got done in many aspects.

Started off Friday with some much needed painting on the side mirror caps. After the journey across country these were looking pretty rough.

Got them back on the car so as not to rock the Terminator 2 side mirror look and headed off to Tucson for a gathering of Volkswagens. Yes, I drove an hour to go to a VW gathering and no, there isn’t much going on in Sierra Vista. I definitely noticed that driving on AZ90 and I10 at night is a bit eerie as there is nothing lighting the road other than the cars driving on it, which were few and far between. There were many times where beyond the span of my cars exterior lights, nothing but blackness. Got to Tucson and hung around for a while with some of the local folks chatting about cars and such. Went to Applebees and grabbed a drink and some food and hung out for a while. Good peoples. By the time I got home, that was basically it for the evening. I wish that gathering were closer, because over 100 miles roundtrip isn’t going to happen on but a few Fridays.

Saturday I got off my rear end and finally installed a pair of parts on the car that I’ve had for over a year.

This was quote the undertaking since door panels had to come off, interior panels had to come off, wire had to be threaded above the glove box but below the air bag, etc. This was all motiviated by the desire to replace the speaker cover on the passenger side which someone cracked when loading my car to move. Whoops. At least it’s a cheap part. Anyway, by the time I got to the passenger side stuff and saw how the speaker cover is held in and that it would have needed to be drilled out, I decided I’d deal with the crack for now. VW uses T20s everywhere, why couldn’t they have here, why’d they have to make things difficult? The door lock slides went in and in addition to looking sharp with the brushed aluminum and the blue LEDs and such and such, they don’t rattle!. They fit much better than the OEM parts and I only managed to break two of those silly one time use door clips.

Next up was some computer nerd action. The thought process is that I should work on starting a web business, because seeing kids five years my junior rake in cash for stuff I know I have the skills to learn and do sure starts a motivational fire under me. So, I decided it was time to learn something new (on top of the Enterprise Java class I’m already taking no less). I poked around, and since I’ve been doing all sorts of fun database application stuff of late, stumbled upon demos and setup for Ruby on Rails. Now, I’ve heard of RoR before, but never really had reason to look into it. Once I did, I was happily off in nerd heaven, rubbing my hands together with a sinister grin thinking off all the fun database applications I could write. You can laugh, it is kind of funny. I went and set it all up on the Cube so I can have some fun and learn some cool stuff.

So hopefully I can keep the motivation high and something fun and interesting can come of this little endeavor.

For the evening’s activities, we went down to Bisbee, which is a small town on top of the border, about a half hour away. We went for a chocolate tasting, a charity event taking place at the library in downtown (I use the term loosely) Bisbee. Once we found the place, paid our way in, and got our tickets we were off to spend said tickets on chocolate treats of all varieties.

Everything was quite delicious, even more so since we skipped dinner to attend. We then walked around town for a few and noticed that although it seemed straight out of 1975, the town was a bit livelier than Sierra Vista. We met up with some folks and found a local bar. A few beers, some pool, and some intensely competitive shuffleboard action and we decided to see what else the town had to offer. We found another bar, much more populated and with the added bonus of live music. Drinks, more pool, and we were just about the last to leave for the night.

Sunday was a lazier day and all we really did was go out to dinner after I watched Maryland topple Duke. All I will say about that is #1: Yay; #2 why can’t they play like that every game?

Thanks to EBay however, I did recieve a nice new keyboard for my laptop to replace the aging, worn out unit that was already down a key and prime to loose some more.

Using the new one made it apparent just how beaten down the old one was, and I have a real ‘K’ key again! I guess after over three years of daily use and abuse, the refresher was necessary. I also have a new battery on the way so I can hopefully end the days of being tethered to a power cable. EBay is fantastic, I’d put off both replacing these parts because they cost over $200 from Apple and many parts resellers online. I scoured EBay for some reliable sources and found both things, in their original packaging, for under $100 total. Score.

For dinner, we went to a small, local, Italian place that prides themselves on their pizza. It was good, very good, I just had to remove some of the excessive amount of cheese from it. They deliver too, thus I am now faced with finding excuses as to why I didn’t make lunch, and instead ordered in from Delios. Yum.

That’s all for now, time to go wrestle with WebLogic a few minutes more in an attempt to get something accomplished on this class assignment before Heroes starts.