slice.

I think that I saw more Iowa/Minnesota/South Dakota license plates in Phoenix and Tucson this weekend then I did last time I was at my parents.

In a related note, my car survived it’s second road trip, bumpy and squeaky, but still a great road trip car. Highlights of the weekend include a trip through Joshua Tree, a night in Phoenix to see an old friend, Jim’s new house in Tucson and a drive back via San Diego. Sadly, I forgot to pull out the camera so no pictures this time.

One of my favorite pictures from a trip to Park City earlier this month.



My legs failed me on our last day; I spent it working in the lodge and taking photos.

I just updated WordPress from 2.something.old to the latest 3.0.5 and it was completely seamless (although my fingers are still crossed). I was honestly expecting a complete and utter blank screen complete with an epic amount of re-doing things.

Kudos to making it a simple ftp upload. Plus, now there is a handy button in the dashboard that does updating for me. I’m down with that!

I suppose this means that I should update on a more regular basis. hmm, maybe I actually will…

In preparation for my trip home, it’s nice to see that it actually getting cold here. Of course, cold is a relative term, but I feel that I’ve lost my sense of relativity or something like that. It’s about as cold as it will ever really get here, and looks like it will rain for the next few days. Crap, I just started talking about the weather. I’ve still got some South Dakota in me

Anyway, despite the certainty that I will freeze my ass off at home, I’m looking forward to it. The bad news is that I’ll probably be bringing my work computer, not my personal one. This means that actual work will be done. It’s ok though, I’m pretty excited about the project I’ll be working on, and I’m one vacation day short anyway. I think I can squeeze a day or two of work in there somewhere.

Completely separate train of thought: Looking back at some of my posts I ran through some quick numbers on saving money riding a motorcycle to work vs a car. As you may or may not recall, I was slightly disappointed in the amount of money I would be saving. I have an amendment to that post however. I stop at starbucks ~85% of working days and get some crack, er, coffee. Turns out that crap is spendy and I spend somewhere in the range of $100/month on it. So considering I have virtually no self control, and there are 4 within easy reach on the way to work, riding a motorcycle (or some self control) would actually save another hundred bucks a month. That is ridiculous.

After years of what some would call a struggle, but I would call an enjoyable experience, I have somehow managed to stop picking/chewing my fingernails. I have no idea what triggered it, but I quite literally stopped cold turkey. My fingernails are now as long as they have probably ever been, and I’m discovering that I have no idea how to properly clip them. Seems really freakin’ crazy, but here I am, 27, and I’ve never had to clip my fingernails (except with my teeth).

I’m sure everyone is really excited about my fingernails, it really just makes for good reading.

The autoshow in LA is this weekend, and much like last year, I’ll probably head up there by myself. On Sunday, however, a co-worker and I are going to rent off-road motorcycles and wander out into the desert with a few other co-workers. I’ve never been on an off-road motorcycle but considering I’m a 27 year old single male, it really seems like something that I should have done in my life by now.

So here is my chance. I’m giving myself about a 5% chance of serious injury. 10% chance of coming away from the thing with a newly purchased ruined rental bike, and about 50% chance that I’ll just go really slow. The other 35% is reserved for doing backflips and wheelies, which I assume is a skill learned the minute I sit down on the thing.

Oh, last weekend in New York was amazing, thanks in large part, to an old friend (Roxie) and a new one (Michelle). I’m going to need a few more trips the the east coast in my near future. On the subject of trips, family is going to be here for Thanksgiving and I just bought plane tickets home and to Chicago for Christmas and New Years. I was hoping for something a little more exotic (I believe Peru and Hawaii were mentioned) but I gave up on that when I realized that if I didn’t buy tickets somewhere soon, they would be getting ridiculously expensive ridiculously quickly. Sorry sis; I know you wanted more

I’ll try for a few pictures from my motorcycling adventure this weekend, hopefully they are of fun smiling faces and not carnage…

Yes, it has been quite some time since my last update. I don’t really think that anything really ground breaking has happened since this summer. Except that for the most part, summer doesn’t end around here.
Hmmm, other news: I literally couldn’t talk last week because I had such a sore throat. Oh, and I finally got a BlackBerry, good stuff (same number though). Next week is a trip to New York with my sister. Can’t wait to see Conan and the Daily Show, plus I’ve never been to NYC, so I’m sure there will be a lot of touristy stuff to do.

I’ll try to update more often, I swear.

Gas is outrageous, today I filled up and it was over $70! I couldn’t believe it.

I did a quick cell phone calculation of my mileage, and I’m getting about 18.5 miles/gallon. Seems a little low, but considering the way I drive, is probably correct. So it got me thinking, how much am I spending a month on gas? According to google, I drive 18.4 miles a day to and from work. I’ll average that out to 20; sometimes I’ll go to target after work or out to lunch. On the weekends I have no idea how much I drive, sometimes I’m all over the place, other times I’m all over the couch, so I’ll just keep it constant and say I drive 140 miles a week…150 to make the math easier

At 150 miles a week and 4 weeks a month, it comes to 600 miles. Take my average of 20 miles/gallon if I ease off a bit and we get 30 gallons a month (I fill up my 15.something gallon tank about once every two weeks, so these numbers seem correct.)

Ok, lets get the allmighty dollar involved here. I just paid $4.50/gallon, so that comes out to ….$135/month. That is actually less then I was thinking, but I’ll go on with my analysis…what if I start driving a motorcycle that gets 40 miles/gallon?

It’s pretty easy to see that that will cut my bill in half (600miles/40miles/gallon = 15gallons). Now I would be paying $67.5/month. What I was really hoping to do here was prove to myself that buying a motorcycle would save me lots of money. Turns out it will save a lot of money in gas, but it will still take me 60 months to recover that initial cost. Yikes!

But what about maintenance you say? Well, I don’t have any numbers for that, so I’m going to do what I do best. Ignore it, much like I do the check engine light that is always on. Besides, the benefit from that is probably outweighed by the fact that I won’t drive the motorcycle to work every day.

The fact of the matter is, I don’t really want a motorcycle for the gas savings, I want it because my car is boring to drive. Ideally, I’d probably just get a fun to drive car, but lets just say the math on that would put me deep in the red. At least the motorcycles are reasonably priced!

In an attempt to spice things up, I’ve started looking at bikes again. I’ve had my eye on a Triumph Speed Four for some time now, but they can be somewhat hard to come by.

They were only available in the US for five years (02-06) and I don’t really think the distribution was all that widespread. Bike hunting should provide to be an ample distraction/hobby for the next few weeks.

I’ve got a lead on one that might coming on the market soon. Nothing certain though. If I can’t get my hands on the S4, I’ve also been looking at Ducati Monsters. I’m being patient and trying to find what I want without impulse buying something. I’ve been without moto-transport for some time now though, so I don’t have any need to have something immediately… I imagine I’ll even be a little shaky the first few times back in the saddle.

Yes, I know its green. As anyone who has known me for a while can no doubt point out, I have a history of oddly colored vehicles. At least with the bike, making me more visible is a good thing.

I have a mothers day gift sitting here on my desk, it just so happens to require some assembly of sorts. I think it will work pretty well once its up and running, but I suppose only time will tell. It may not be working until the next time I go home

On a similar note, I’ve been doing some thinking about making a family site again. I found some cool ideas, and think that I can get a site up and running with a blog, a calendar, some pictures and maybe a history page…I’m not quite sold on the last one yet. Oh, and of course it would be cool to have a bunch of profiles and stuff.

Quite ambitious of me, I know….It will probably just end up being a wordpress blog, such as the one you are reading now (and whats wrong with that?), but I’ve got high hopes of using drupal or xoops. I don’t know what they are either, thats how far I’ve gotten!

Oh, so its been a year since I moved to California. Holy crap!

I had a good one year review at my job, and everything is going well on that front. I want to make a trip to Iowa, South Dakota or maybe the Twin Cities soon, or at least sometime this summer, and I’m trying to keep an eye out for a good flight. All I’m trying to say is don’t be surprised if I show up late one Thursday evening expecting to sleep on a couch somewhere.

-ethan

It seems like every time I play Wii I get some sort of nostalgic feeling. I had been playing the new Zelda game and beat it last week, but I have never played any other Zelda games, so I’m not sure why I kept thinking about back in the day. Maybe it’s just a function of actually playing a video game console. The last one I actually owned was a Sega.

I downloaded Super Mario Brothers 3 tonight, and the feeling of being a kid again down in Wurtz’s basement was palpable. All I could think of was the days of switching from playing in the snow, to playing Nintendo, to playing with Legos. I can’t wait to see what else I can get on the “Virtual Console”. Maybe I’ll finally beat Super Pitfall or play a season as the Lions in Tecmo Super Bowl. At the very least, some Excitebike is going to go down