Tuesday morning, this picture summed up exactly how I felt. I got up anyway and went to work, where things were mostly normal. Except we’re going to do some semi-complex things with a new machine, and we didn’t have a good plan for that yet. So we made one. And then I spent an hour or two trying to figure out why a machine failed a test last weekend and looked like it was doing fine on the same test today.

Trivia: We all went to Majerle’s in south Chandler again. Even though the questions are usually too easy, the earlier start time is more convenient, and the audio/visual questions are a nice change of pace. It’s noisier and more chaotic than Fibber’s, though, which is a little annoying when you’re trying to talk to people.  I ate dinner there this time.  The food’s not bad.

This time, there was some sort of screw-up with the questions and answers; they played the wrong audio track for a bonus question, and then played a video clip from “Men of Honor”, then said that the clip was from “A Few Good Men”. Enough people complained that they did the right thing for those questions. We won the competition since we only missed 2 questions. Yay! Trevor also told us about a semi-disturbing day last week where he was the only person in his section of the cube farm because there had been layoffs recently.  I’ve done that at least once this year, but in that case, 3 of my co-workers were taking vacation that day and the 4th one was sick.

For the entire week, one of our guys is on vacation. He’s not really on vacation, because his wife had to travel because of a family emergency, but he’s taking care of all the dogs. His wife owns a dogsitting business. Computers aren’t nearly as cute and fuzzy as dogs, but they don’t chew on your furniture, and they don’t need to be walked.

Not a lot really happened on Monday. I fixed a stupid XML problem and finalized vacation plans.  I tried to walk Moira again, but she wasn’t really interested in the great outdoors. We’re doing trivia at Majerle’s again on Tuesday, which may be interesting.

This is the last picture from the camping trip last week, where I’m holding up a log that I cut. We weren’t doing any fishing or hunting on the trip, so this is what I get in the way of trophy pictures.

Lazy Sunday, minus the scramble around 8am when one machine at work failed horribly in stupid ways. It was the only machine that died, but it shouldn’t have died like that. Sigh. I’ll have to dissect this on Monday.

The Cardinals game on Sunday was pretty interesting to watch. You don’t often see teams doing a fake punt, but the Seahawks did one and had it work perfectly. You don’t often see teams doing a sort-of-but-not-really onside kick, but the Cardinals did one and had it work perfectly. The Seahawks’ offense just couldn’t get its act together, and their QB got put in a sack lots of times. Ah well, it’s always nice to see the home team win one.

Saturday was Range Day. I got to Zach’s place a little after 8:30am. He was totally ready to go. We threw his guns in the back of my car and settled down to wait for Teh Nacho. After about an hour, we said, “What the heck? Did he not know we were supposed to meet here first?” Then we went to the range, where he’d been all along.

So we joined Jason and Nacho at the range. Nacho had his new muzzleloader, but had had some trouble with it—either the hammer was messed up, or the nipple was messed up, but the spark from the percussion cap wasn’t reaching the powder. Since he couldn’t clear the chamber, and didn’t want to transport a loaded gun, he’d poured a bunch of water into the gun. Yech.

Jason had some stuff that I’d never seen before, a .308 CETME, a little .380 Ruger automatic, and a 1911-style .45. I put 15 rounds through the CETME. It was pretty accurate, and kicked quite a bit. When I’d sent the last round through it, the bolt didn’t hold open the way it should have. Jason took the rifle and looked at it, and found that somehow, one of the pins that holds the whole thing together had gotten bent. This was a bit annoying, as we had no spare pins, so we couldn’t fire the CETME any more. I don’t think it was anything I did, but it was still a bit disconcerting.

The .380 was tiny and easy to use, but its small size and weight made it so that it kicked upwards a lot more than I had bargained for. The .45 was easier to handle, but it ejected brass straight up and back about 1/4 of the time. I got bonked in the forehead, while Nacho had a casing get stuck between his glasses and his face. I can see why people like the .45 ACP round though.

Zach and I amused ourselves by taking my .357 and trying to hit the 300-yard gong with it. We were getting reasonably close. I set 2 golf balls on top of a styrofoam block at about 50 feet and tried to hit them with .38. I missed both of them with the first cylinder, but blew both of them away with the first shot of the second cylinder. Hmmm.

Then we went to lunch at Chili’s. Jason said that he was in charge of the marketing and sales for a clam farm, so we made some entirely predictable jokes. We tried to plan a trip to J&G later on, but it looks like Nov. 7 is the day that works for most people. Desert Code Camp is Nov. 7. I had wanted to attend that. It’s always something, isn’t it?

Nacho and Jason took off, while Zach and I went back to his house. For safety, somebody had to get the powder and bullet out of the muzzleloader, and Zach’s house was closest. Zach got the powder out, but didn’t have the tools to remove the bullet. Then I amused Indy and Luka while Zach played some “Rainbow Six: Vegas”. Then I went home and took Moira for a walk, and cleaned the rifle and pistol. Pretty good day, all things considered.

Indy here does not approve of Caturday.

Friday was fairly normal with one exception. Went out to lunch with everyone, and half of us ate at the coney island place, while the other half ate at the Japanese place next door. We all ate outside at adjacent tables, because it’s cool enough to eat outside now.

While we were eating, we heard some sort of commotion off to the west. We finished eating, then got up to check it out. It was some sort of miniature protest rally. A few people were marching around chanting anti-Joe Arpaio slogans and carrying signs. Some other people were carrying signs indicating that they approved of Arpaio and that all illegal immigrants deserved to be deported. There were a number of police officers standing around the whole mess and looking annoyed. We took in the scene for a few minutes and then left. It didn’t look like it was going to be particularly edifying, or even that interesting. Plus, we had to get back to the office and get some work done.

The scheduled excitement for Saturday is some range time and lunch with Zach and Teh Nacho. That should be fun.

This is the huge wasp that I mentioned a few entries ago. I haven’t been able to find out what kind of wasp it was since there are so many different kinds mentioned on Wikipedia, and entomology is a part of biology I never paid much attention to.

Hm. Thursday morning, the bus had a flat tire or something right after it got off the freeway. There was a loud bang, the bus shook and rattled as if it’d hit a huge pothole, and the driver stopped the bus to check it out. At least it didn’t happen that far away from the office.

Nacho bought a bag of black powder for use with his muzzleloading rifle. He said that his wife had decided to use that bag as a doorstop. Using a low explosive as a doorstop? It’s not really that dangerous, but the potential for really stupid things happening is way too high for comfort there.

Everything, especially camping, goes better with bacon. While it may be cheating to cook bacon over a propane stove rather than a fire, it still tasted great.

Wednesday had the usual Rock Band at Steve’s. However, my Xbox started behaving weirdly when I plugged it in and turned it on. It spontaneously rebooted after 30-120 seconds if it was placed flat on the floor. The disc was fine, and everything was connected properly. After we exiled the big clumsy Lab from the living room, we tried setting the console upright. That made everything work perfectly. I don’t understand why this would happen now, but at least it wasn’t the Red Ring of Death that plagues this particular console.

Here, we see Zach’s tent, with Luka and Indy in the bottom right corner.

Monday wasn’t that exciting, except the bus was really empty. Tons of the people who ride the bus work for the state or county governments, and those people all get Columbus Day off. Those of us in the private sector or the city government had to go in to work as usual.

Tuesday, instead of going to the normal trivia at Fibber’s, we went to a different trivia competition at Majerle’s in Chandler. This wasn’t anything like the Fibber’s trivia. It started an hour earlier, there were a bunch of audio-visual questions, and almost all of the questions were easier. Other people said that the food was better than Fibber’s, or at least different. We decided to give the place another try next week, since it was enjoyable even though it was different. We ended up getting second place, which is generally a good thing.

This is the campfire we cooked dinner on on Saturday night. Of course, after we had all gone to bed, Zach heard something outside. He got up and found a skunk trying to get into our garbage. He was a little worried about trying to scare the skunk off, as skunks don’t scare easily, but the skunk walked off after being yelled at.

Sunday started out fairly late. I slept well, and got up at about 8am. Zach and Sarah got up a bit later. I ate some breakfast (granola bars and an apple, the breakfast of champions) and Zach got out the propane stove. There wasn’t anywhere flat enough to set the stove, though, so we used my cooler as a platform for the stove. We cooked eggs, bacon, and coffee, which were pretty good. As we were finishing breakfast, a black wasp that was about 3″ long zoomed in and investigated Zach’s shoes. He killed the wasp, though it took multiple hits before it died. A few minutes later, I saw another wasp that looked similar fly right past our campsite. I had never seen wasps that large.

Then Zach and I took the dogs out for a hike. Or tried to. Luka, the Schnauzer, was determined to either pee on everything or bark at everything he could see. Indy, the miniature dachsund, just wanted to sniff everything. This made it a bit more difficult to hike than it should have been. As we were taking the dogs back to the campsite, a huge black Lab passed us. Both the dogs went nuts, and acted like they wanted to fight the Lab, even though the Lab weighed at least 3 times Luka’s weight and 6 times Indy’s weight.

When we got back to the campsite, I took my tent down and packed everything up. Sarah had Columbus Day off, and Zach took a vacation day, so they had decided to stay out longer. I drove back, over the nerve-wrackingly horrible FR215, and the better-maintained main roads.

When I got home, Moira let me know that she was really unhappy that I’d been away for 24 whole hours. Then I unpacked, did laundry, and watched the Cardinals try their best to lose a football game. Anyway. It was a fun weekend, but it took a lot of time. At least it didn’t rain this time.

Saturday, the plan was for me, Zach, Sarah, and their friend Steve to go out camping. Of course, Steve got sick, and Zach and Sarah were delayed. So we went without Steve, and a bit later than we’d planned. Anyway, I’d planned a bit better than last time, so my cooler was full of enough ice, and I brought the folding saw.

We got there about 1:30pm, despite the last 3 miles of “road” being in horrible shape. OK, FR 215 is a Forest Service road, not an Interstate, but it was nerve-wracking and uncomfortable to drive over, and it took forever. Then we set up camp. I didn’t have much to do—I just set up my tent in the location pictured above. REI may be tree-hugging hippes, but their tents are pretty quick and easy to set up.

This time, Zach and Sarah had brought their dogs. They’ve currently got a neurotic Schnauzer and a not-too-bright miniature dachsund. The Schnauzer barked and growled at everything, and when we tried to take him on a walk down the main trail, he pitched a fit every time another hiker passed us. The dachsund was a lot quieter, at least.

Then Zach and I went to gather firewood. Zach waded across the creek and found a lot of reasonably good dead wood on the other side. Pickings were slim on the side of the creek where the campground was, for obvious reasons. I found an 8″ diameter dead branch that no one had cut yet, and spent far too long cutting that off the tree and hauling it back to the site. Then we reduced the dead wood to manageable lengths with hatchet, axe, and saw.

Dinner was made over the open fire, and was hot dogs and brats. Zach found that brats take a lot longer to cook than hot dogs do when his brat was almost totally raw in the middle. I roasted mine for a lot longer, and had a well-cooked brat. The dogs got the last hot dog, and Zach and Sarah roasted marshmellows after dinner was over.

Unlike last time, it wasn’t raining. We watched the fire die, then turned off our flashlights and lanterns for a half hour or so to see the stars. That was kind of neat. Since the sun set at about 6:15pm, we were in our tents by 8:15. Without good artificial light, you can’t stay up nearly as late as you can while you’re in civilization.