Not Necessarily Interesting News

I finally talked to the HR lady about the Iraq position today. We had been playing phone tag for the last few days. I’ve got a day and time for my all-day interview next week. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.
I also talked to a girl here at work whose husband has been in Iraq as part of the military for the past couple of years. She said that yesterday a mortar hit within about 10 feet of where he sleeps. Luckilly, he wasn’t there when it landed. She also said that it’s not totally safe over there and to not get the urge to ‘explore’. ‘Stay hiding in your compound and you should be fine.’ Trust me, that’s not going to be a problem. I like my head right where it is, TYVM.

Yesterday I went to a offroad park about 2 hours from here, Katemcy Rocks. I was goin to meet a couple of people from the San Antonio chapter of the Texas Rovers. My father and son also came along. I showed up about 1/2 hour before the others so I got the truck aired down and ready to head out. I did get to play on the ramp a bit before they showed up as seen in the pic.

Joe and Ed showed up and we got ready to head out. I hopped in the Defender and turned the ignition. The key turned to ‘on’ then just started spinning in circles. The truck wouldn’t turn over. Shit. Ed, who has done a lot of work on Rovers, helped me remove the ignition and we played with it for a bit to no avail. The truck wasn’t gonna start. I sent Joe and Ed on their way, I didn’t want to ruin their day too. My father and I stayed behind and played with it and discovered a way of reassembling the ignition to cause the starter to turn over the engine. The only problem was that after the engine started the starter was still engaged. We solved that by pulling the starter relay. The rest of my day went like this. To start the car, insert the starter relay. Once the truck turns over pull that and it stays running. To stop, leave in gear, step on brakes and relase clutch to stall it. At the end of the day I just had to disconnect the battery.
I also had to put up with the persistant overheating problems. It now looks like a blown head gasket. Oh boy.

When out on the trail we were navigating a particularly hairy section where you have to put your left tires over a rocks while your right tires are inches from a 30′ drop-off. Fun. After negotiating that Joe made the turn away from the edge and when climbing away from the drop-off he put a rear tire into a hole which caused the whole Disco to lean back lifting a wheel 3′ off the ground. He was teetering near going over backwards and off the cliff. My father who was taking pics with my camera jumped to the rescue and in doing so smashed my Sony digicam. Oops. There went $350. He keeps saying he’ll replace it and I insist it’s not a big deal. ‘It’s only a camera, I’m just glad you could throw weight onto Joe’s truck to keep him from falling off a cliff.’ Sadly I only got 6 pics of the day before the camera met its untimely demise. This pic is of Joe’s Disco about 30 seconds before trying to throw himself off that cliff. Ed’s RRC is right behind him and I’m behind Ed.

The damage:

• Blown head gasket
• broken speedo cable from removing dashboard
• trashed ignition
• crushed digicam

I’m going to be spending some quality time in the garage with my truck over the next couple weeks.

Talked to the recruiter about the Iraq job at lunch today. Looks like I’ll be going in for the 4th and final interview next week. It sounds like it’ll be a whole day affair. Kind of a ‘see how I fit’ thing I suppose. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

We went to the preview of Serenity last night. If you haven’t seen the TV show it’s based on, Firefly, go see it today. As for the movie, it rocked. It was unfinished and if you paid attention you could see where it still needed polishing of SFX and editing. I won’t go into spoilers but it was a well done finale to the series that we didn’t get the first go around.
Afterwards one of the studio execs took comments and suggestions from the audience and gave everyone fancy keychains and little posters to take home. A nice added touch for fans willing to pay money to see an unfinished film.
I can’t wait until September to see the finished product.

I finally got my results back from my tests from last week. Everything was totally normal. It was either stress or possibly just a pulled chest muscle or something. As far as my ticker, it’s in perfect health. Yeah, I could lose a few pounds to be healthier and I have lost 10-12 over the last few weeks to that end. The docs now at least have a baseline on me for later in life. I’ll still have to watch out for problems later in life but right now, no worries. 🙂
I’ve felt fine since then and feel even better now that I’ve done my 3rd interview for the Iraq job. I think I’ve had a decent showing in them. I really want the job as I feel it’s the best thing for my family and they do things that are cool as hell that I also am interested in. The waiting to hear about the job is the hardest part. Not knowing if/when my contract where I am now will end does put stress on things. If I can find the right position with the right company everything would be much nicer.

Two days ago I went in for a Heart Stress Test on the recommendation of my doc. Last week I was experiencing a bit of chest pain and some headaches so I went in for a check-up. After talking for a bit and going over my history and family history he decided to get me tested to be safe. Once he’d heard that I had an uncle die at 44 he got more cautious. Family history is a big indicator of possible problems.
I showed up for the test and got into some shorts to get ready for it. They had me take off my shirt and put sticky pads all over my chest and hooked me up to the machine. They took some pre-test measurements and then had me get on the treadmill.
The test itself wasn’t really that tough. The treadmill is on an incline and starts off rather slow. Every three minutes it speeds up and the incline increases. The doc had a target heart rate of around 160 for me. As the treadmill started he said ‘Don’t try to beat the machine. You won’t make it’. I reached my target rate at around the last minute or so of the third stage. He asked me how I was feeling all through the test and at this point asked if I wanted to continue. I said my heart and lungs were doing fine, the only thing that was gonna stop me was my calves. They were burning like crazy.
He stopped the test right at the start of the 4th stage(Thank God, my calves were dying but I didn’t want to stop. I guess I was trying to beat the machine. 🙂 ) and said he had everything he needed. He also said that everything looked good at that time. It takes a couple days for the full analysis so I hope to find out tomorrow how I did. I think I did fine. I felt great before, during, and after the test. Actually, I’d felt fine all weekend before the test after seeing my doc on Friday. That tells me it really seems to be work related. The not knowing what’s going to happen and how you’ll support your family eats you up inside.
Both docs said it seemed more like a stress thing than any real heart problems at this time. I also found out over the weekend that other people in my family are/were prone to the same ‘anxiety attacks’, so I’m apt to side with the docs. The longer I stay in my current position the closer I know I’m getting to being laid off. The end of the quarter is coming and the rumors are flying. As a contractor I have no job security which is what I’m trying to fix with the Iraq job.
Speaking of the Iraq position, I had the second interview yesterday and it went great. I talked with a V.P. over there for over a 1/2 hour and it sounds like a great opportunity. They do some cutting-edge work in fields that have always been interesting to me and from the job description I feel I would fit right in. They said they’d be getting back to me and schedule another phone interview then a day at the facility to do a meet-and-greet. You know it went well when the V.P. gives you his cellphone number and tells you to call anytime if you have questions. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one. I’d love to get into my first permanent position in over 5 years. I can see myself staying a long time with the right company and they seem to be the kind I could do it with. Yeah, a year in Iraq away from family doesn’t sound like a perfect job but I figure it’s a great way to get some experience in the field, earn some good money, and, I know this sounds hokey, to serve my country in whatever way I can.

Sitting here in bed a bit ago I heard a noise outside. Sounded like tires over a curb. I figured someone had gone in the ditch again. I heard squealing tires and a crunching. ‘Crap, better get up and look’. By the time I got up and looked out the window all I saw was a girl standing on the corner. Wierd. A minute later a guy drives up and stops sideways in the street and talks to her. 30 seconds later a Deputy and a Trooper come whipping around the corner and get the guy to pull over. As I’m watching from my window a girl walks out of my bushes and crosses the street to where they are.
‘Huh? Did I miss something?’
I wandered out my front door to hide in the shadows and try to figure out WTF was going on. And to take pics in case something even more interesting happened.
They convince him to turn off the car and then pull him from it. They do a field sobriety test and after a bit of persuasion get him to blow in the breathalizer. Apparently he failed as they immmediately cuffed him and put him in a cruiser. One of the Troopers then reached in a poured out a can of beer on the ground.
They talked with the girls for a bit and then as a motorcycle drove by a deputy noticed me standing in shadows. He came over and asked if I had called. I told him no. Then he asked whose yard he drove through. ‘I don’t know’, I said as he started shining his light at the neighbor’s yard. Then we noticed the tracks on my lawn. The dude missed the turn at the corner by like 50 feet and drove up into my yard and missed both my house and a big-ass oak tree by 10-12 feet. ‘Shit’, said I as I sat and looked at my torn up lawn. I needed some new ruts I guess.
They hauled the guy off and let his sober girlfriend drive off in the Cherokee.

Right now as I sit here and type this a drunk guy on a Harley pulled up right outside my window. Then fell over. I called 911 on his ass. He finally got it together enough to stand it up, pick up his broken mirror, and drive off before a deputy could show up. Fuck this town

That last paragraph seals it. I don’t know what else to say. Two drunks outside my window in a hour, a drunk driving death last week, along with all the other idiots. And my son wonders why we don’t let him play in the front yard without close supervision. This used to be a great neighborhood but in the past 2-3 years things have been going downhill. Time to move to a few acres in the country.

I’ve been looking for a permanent position with a company lately as I want to get off the contractor bandwagon. I sent my resume in for a job that looked like a decent fit, doing Linux clustering work, network administration, permanent employee, etc. It’s for a company that does 3D mapping and rendering and such so it looked like fun as one of my hobbies is maps. The catch was, after your initial training, you do a year of on-site work for the company.

In Iraq.

Last night I got a call and did a phone interview. It seems like I passed the first hurdle and my name is headed up the list. The pay is outstanding for that year overseas. Enough for me to pay off all our bills including our house. After that year I’d come home to a permanent position here in Austin. No moving or anything. And no bills/no mortgage other than the month to month expenses.
A year in Iraq sounds interesting. I wonder if I should get fitted for a cast-iron neck brace before I go.

Woohoo! I got tickets to the ‘Special Advance Preview’ on June 23rd of Serenity, the movie offshoot of the tragically short lived TV show Firefly. They sold out in under 10 minutes and I was lucky enough to click the link to Fandango at the right time. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. If you haven’t seen Firefly you owe it to yourself to check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

Didn’t do much this weekend. We did pick up the first season of Dead Like Me on sale at Hollywood video for like $15. We hadn’t seen a single episode before but decided for $15 it was worth a shot. We are now addicted. In three nights we watch through 1/2 the season and will be done with it in the next few days. I hate finding new shows to love. It means I have to schedule time to catch them on TV and keep up with them. Let’s see, right now we follow; The Sopranos, Deadwood, Carnivale, Dead Like Me, and Entourage on HBO. We also liked Oz when it was still on. HBO does the best TV shows around, I swear.

I also picked up Forza Motorsport for the Xbox. It’s taking some getting used to as it’s a simulator not an arcade game. Turn off ABS and you’ll go sliding off the track everytime you hit the brakes. Get a little ‘love tap’ from an AI car in a turn and you’re going for a little spinning ride. It is neat the way that you can customize your car like you want it. Want a ricer? There’s lots of stickers. Want a sleeper? Put a giant turbo in that Focus. I’ve found that the best way to upgrade your car quick is to sell the cars you win and use that money for upgrades. I did that for my AudiTT and now it’s a 400+HP beast. The physics seem pretty decent. My only complaint is that the car sounds don’t seem realistic enough. When I put a big ass supercharger in a car I want to hear that high-pitched whine. It doesn’t seem to do that which kinda sucks. The 5.1 Dolby sound is good though after you turn off the crappy music. Why does every game seem to think I want to hear music when playing? It distracts from the gameplay if you ask me. I’ll put up with it in menus but turn that shit off in the game please.