So the stepdaughter a while back brought a mama cat home that she rescued from something or somewhere, I don't remember as I stopped listening to anything after hearing "I brought a cat home."  Now don't get me wrong, I love animals and I have special place in my heart for cats. I loved my cat Rufus, he was my buddy and I still miss him.

So the mama cat gave birth to kittens as this what mama cats do. The kittens were given away when they were the right age except for one that we've call "Kamakize". Not my favorite animal in the whole world, as he is the animal equivalent of that really annoying kid in the grocery store that throws things in the middle of the isle as you are trying to walk past, and laughs when your cart hits the box of oatmeal he just chucked. I not sure how he got that name but I suspect it has to do with the way that he hides under things and attacks your feet when you walk by. Anyhow, "Kamakize" gets neutered and of course we go to get the mama cat spayed and she was pregant again. So she had six little grey long haired kittens. Now when I walk to the train in the morning I look at all the cats in the neighborhood, and I yell at any grey long haired cats walking around, "you owe me money".

Well as I posted earlier, I am home sick with a cold. So I am sitting around watching daytime television. First, lets just say that I am pretty sure that I've lost brain cells from this stuff. After a couple of hours of watching Maury, Jerry and Montel I was looking forward to Jakers, as it is more intellectually stimulating than the previous shows. However while I was watching Maury, a episode called "Who's your Daddy" where a women who brought eight guys on the show to have a paternity test, it made me think, I wonder if I can round up the neighborhood cats and take them on Maury to find out which one is the Daddy. It's gotta be easier than the show I was watching as it can only be one of four cats that are the Daddy.

Walking to the kitchen to get some coffee, I saw the dog, followed by the mama cat, followed by Kamakize, followed by the alpha kitten and thought "What a Menagerie!"

Some of you know that besides being a code monkey, I am also a car and motorcycle guy. Yes I know, now I don't talk incesently about cars or motorcycles, but I can. I just choose not to as to not bore the general public, but I got to thinking, if my C# code ramblings don't put you to sleep, I'm sure a post about a car or bike every now and again isn't going to bore you to tears either. Besides there are already posts about that kind of stuff here, they've just been cleverly disgusted. Remember the post about Fuzzy? Hate to break it to you,  but that post was about a Bike that my Dad, Brothers and I turned into a quad. So anyhow, I've added two new categories, cars and motorcycles. Speaking of motorcycles, Ed turned me on to a great new motorcycle news blog called The KneeSlider, if that kind of stuff interest you, check it out.

We'll since I am confessing to be a car guy (don't worry this isn't a shock to my Beautiful Wife, she already knew), I have to tell you that sleeper cars are my favorites. A sleeper for those of you that don't know is a car that looks like your granddad's car (Not my Granddad he's a Kelly and therefore has a pretty hot Avalon, you've probably seen him, he's the guy in the silver car that passed you in the fast lane... Love you Grandpa!!!) that is faster than the camaro down the street, you know the one that the guy is always cleaning on the lawn with a cloth diaper while he lovingly rubs the fenders and looks adoringly at it. Surfin' the net this morning I found a great example of a sleeper from one of my favorite shows. It's called TopGear and it's a BBC show that is only on cable/sat here in the US, and being that I have neither of those, I watch it online. TopGear isn't your typical Automotive show as people that don't even like cars are entertained by it. That is because the host Jeremy Clarkson, is funny, entertaining, informative and can poke fun at himself. Anyhow I hope you enjoy, the video of a Mitsubishi Lancer four door, keeping up with a Lamborghini Gallardo.

I have a cold, a kick your butt, nose won't stop running, sinse pressure arisin' cold. So I am sitting in bed (I love my wireless network) watching "Deal or No Deal" rooting for a women who's giving half of the money she wins to the Special Olympics, and sweating my face off. In this cold induced state I have questions floating through my head. So I will list them here for you in no particular order.

• Why is it that the common cold isn't cured yet?
• Why is a square of toliet paper smaller them a square of facial tissue?
• Why am I watching "Deal or No Deal"?
• How am I not asleep yet?
• Should I build a HTPC (Home Theater PC)?

But I mostly wonder about the toliet paper verses the facial tissue one the most.

The people I work with are in general pretty laid back and mellow, have a good sense of humor and can take a joke. Because of that from time to time we’ll pull a little prank on each other. It’s all in good fun and no one ever gets up set to the point where there is retaliation. We just have a good laugh, take a picture or two and move on.  In truth it is a good thing, because our work is so public, there is a lot of pressure, along with tight deadlines, and revisions of revisions the stresses can get to you. We are a small team of three to four people depending on the project so keeping it light is a good idea.

As with most things of this nature there is usually someone who takes the lead on pulling the pranks, I usually gravitate to that position. However yesterday I was on the receiving end, and couldn’t of been more proud of the guys. You see at work we have this “policy” that if you walk away from you computer it must be locked. It makes sense, it’s a security issue so we follow it pretty well, however, on my team it’s a rule that if someone doesn’t lock there machine and they are gone long enough it is your responsibility to change there desktop picture to something that is embarrassing, yet won’t get anyone fired. Rick once walked away from his computer and I changed his desktop picture to the Disney princesses. Rick of course had a great sense of humor about it and left it up for a month or so, just to see the reaction of people. He dealt with allot of internal request so people would walk up and see the Disney princesses across his dual monitor display and give him the strangest looks. It was priceless. Well like I said earlier, Ed got me with the same trick, so of course I took a screenshot to share with you.

One of the great things about living in Southern California is the weather. We have mild winters (last week with 3 inches of rain excluded), and great springs and falls. However every spring and fall there is an event that happens that causes havoc on my life for two or three weeks after. People in Arizona, don’t have to suffer this event as they were smart enough to vote against, it but I guess everyone here in LA was out surfing in the middle of the winter and missed their chance to vote against it passing into law. The event is Daylight Savings Time. In that fall we go back to Standard Pacific Time. The older I get the harder it is to deal with these changes. It’s just an hour, it should be a big deal, but it completely goofs me up. The why we are told to remember it is,”Spring Ahead, Fall Back”. Which is just about right, the time change in spring drops me on my head, and the change in fall lands me right on my back.

Sunday was the time change, and it went well, mostly as I didn’t go anywhere and my TV shows were on a little earlier. However when Monday came around, I set the alarm back twice and slept on the floor for 20 minutes, because my alarm clock is on the other side of the room and I was too tired to make it all the way back to bed. I was sick Monday night, and Tuesday I didn’t go to work . Wednesday morning was basically a repeat of Monday. So both of those days, I ended up being on the last train I can catch without getting fired. Also Monday, Wednesday and Thursday I had to wake up my Beautiful Wife to take me to the train, otherwise I just wasn’t going to be able to make it.

So today I get up about the right time, to get to work on time, I get up and get in the shower. I realized I took my shower with my eyes shut the entire time. I realized this when I had to open my eyes to shave. And believe me, it was not the greatest jobs shaving I’ve even done. I stumble into our room and get dressed, stumble to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal and wolf it down while watching the news. I finish getting ready, kiss my Beautiful Wife goodbye and walk to the train. Now this is the first time I’ve walked to the train in like two months. I had been really good about walking every day, but with project of large proportions looming and working almost every night, I was too tired and ached too much to walk. So I walked today, got the train on time, life was good. So in completely truth I actually woke up on the train ride into work.

Walking to work, I notice it’s a beautiful day, but somehow the walk got me noticing that slack seemed to have a design flaw. It felt like the pockets we constructed of about ten times the material needed for the job. Anyhow got to work and didn’t think to much about it, till I sat down at my desk, and I notice the fabric was gathering at my mid-thigh, and I realized that I was so tired when I got dress, that I was actually wearing swim trunks under my pants. So I called my beautiful Wife and told her, I was tired, didn’t want to be at work, left my brains on the dresser and my shorts on under my pants. She laughed so hard she cried. And that’s how the time change affected me, what did it do to you?

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written a good post. I don’t know if this is going to be one, but at least it will be longer than two sentences and a link. I do apologize for the drought of posts lately but work has been intense and now that we have our big project time and I have some room to breath the post will be more plentiful.

It's been an interesting day, week, whatever it has been. I stayed home today because I was under the weather.  Speaking of the weather it's been raining since yesterday evening almost not stop. Which leads into the weather related story of the day.  I got a call about noon from my brother K, to let me know that brother J had been in a multi-car accident. He's banged up, bruised sore and lacerated however he is wholly intact which is great. His poor truck that has moved me five times and countless others is not terribly intact. Anyhow apparently in a typical Californian driver type move, someone doing 80 in the fast lane in the poor rain and the rest writes itself. Back to the truck, the motor mounts broke, causing the transmission mounts to break and it dropped the drive-shaft. So in layman terms it’s broke. However I am just glad my Brother is okay!

In rain related news, as some of you may already know I am shooting my first wedding for a friend from the train this weekend. I am completely nervous and of course it looks like there is a chance that it is going to rain. Well it is suppose to be an outdoor wedding at 5pm, so of course I am worried about the light, however if it rains, I’ll have to take all of the formals inside. Which isn’t a bad thing it is just different! Like I said I’ve been nervous as I usually don’t photograph people and photographing a wedding is an art itself. So I’ve been reading books and some good forums. I’ve been practicing a lot lately and man is my family sick of seeing the flash go over behind them. In fact that Little Boy has taken to hiding when he sees me with the camera in my hand. I’ve been also checking out some sites that help keep some of the cost down. Photography can be a very expensive proposition, well being of modest means I like trying to make some of the tools myself. So I’ve been reading DIYPhotography.net to get ideas of how to build some of the lighting rigs I want but can’t afford to buy.

In other news, My Beautiful Wife and I have just passed a milestone. We celebrated our five year Wedding Anniversary last month. We took some time just for us, took a weekend went to the mountains to a cute little town to celebrate us. In all truthfulness it is just amazingly easy to be married to her. She is my best friend and I can always be myself with her. Five years has gone by so fast, I so look forward to the next five years.

This was a great article on how to become a Programming Rock Star. My favorite is tip number 11, eat well, exersice, and don't drink too much coffee. I know that this is the first post in a while and I promise that the next one will be better.