Today is another lovely day. 65 outside right now, with high of 88 predicted this afternoon.

I picked up Rocky, who was wandering around my feet and purring, and she settled in for a nice long scritch. Such a cutie. When she jumped off my chest, she sat down on the piano bench, next to Spooky, who proceeded to give her a lengthy tongue bath. Rocky was loving it, and kept rolling around to make sure Spooky got her whole head while both of them purred loudly. Such a sweet pair of cats.

I installed a new 128 db Rivco air horn on my motorcycle yesterday. It’s really loud! I’ll never be embarrassed by the stupid tinny tiny little electric horn, which sounded like a sick Yugo or something. It’s been a long while since I dragged out tools and worked on a motorcycle. The installation took me all day, and included a trip to Ace Hardware for more parts and Fry’s Electronics for a new multimeter (can’t find my old one). In the end, it worked out okay. The side cover of my bike doesn’t fit anymore, due to the air compressor’s bulk. I’m going to call the manufacturer about that, see if they have any suggestions.

I’m going to wash my car today, and bring it to the Ford dealer to be evaluated for trade-in price. After that, we’re going to talk prices of the 2011 Ford Mustang I want. Car price negotiations are never fun (for me), but I am prepared to walk away, which I believe is the most powerful weapon a consumer can wield in this situation. The Ford dealer really has little incentive to offer a price break on a brand new sports car that just now started shipping, but I have to try. One positive thing to note is they are offering 0% interest, and I’m already approved for a car loan through Ford Credit. My bank also approved me, but they want 4.9% interest. Gee, uh, no thanks.

Well, it’s time to scoop and feed, and head out to Waffle House for breakfast and endless coffee.

Today I stopped at a Ford dealer, and talked to a salesman about the new 2011 Ford Mustang, which will be coming to a dealer near you in a couple of weeks. I’ve made an appt to test drive one, to make sure I’m happy fitting into a smaller car.

I researched it, and Consumer Reports gives the Mustang good marks for reliability. The only things they didn’t like was the back seat comfort and trunk space. Both *are* small on a Mustang, but one has to accept that going into the deal. It’s really just a two seater, and the trunk is barely big enough to hold two large suitcases.

So what? It has a 306 horsepower V6, 6 speed stick shift and goes 0-60 in 5.6 seconds! What a beast! I’ve “built” 3 different models on the Ford website, and sent the 3 PDF printouts to the salesman via email, so he knows what kinds of features I’m interested in. Which one I get depends entirely upon how much money I save up between now and when I actually decide to purchase one. The longer I wait, the more features I can afford. I already got approved by Ford Credit, and if I choose the 36 month payout, I get 0% interest!

A cool car that I can afford! Neat!

Now I really ought to go back to the Chevy dealer and price out their V6. Car & Driver reports it’s about the same size engine, but a few hundred pounds heavier, and a few tenths of a second slower.

Spooky is 4 years old today! What a good boy. He’s already been up in my arms this morning for a hug and cuddle.

I haven’t written much about my new position at work. Last August, the company reorganized, and I got moved from the UNIX team to a networking team. Two of my teammates went onto the CM (Configuration Management) team. Then in December, one of them left the company, creating a serious gap. I was asked to fill in, since I was bored and looking for work to do anyway. Then I was asked to apply for the job, which I did.

It all became official in March, and I’ve been fairly busy and very happy since. I hated being bored. In six months on the network team, my boss talked to me on the phone 3 times, and assigned me one task, a 1 day troubleshooting session. I kept doing my old UNIX admin job, because nobody else was doing it. So in this new position, I still get to do a bunch of UNIX work, plus some programming, both in the C language, and Perl. This week, I updated some Perl programs for a production project, then wrote another set of Perl progras and built a Perl CGI website to allow the QA dept to test the first set of programs I wrote. I also debugged and fixed a new feature in an in-house written C program that’s part of our application. The whole thing took less than a week, and made the time literally fly by. I love it!

The best part of my new job is that I get involved in lots of tasks, and as I’m becoming a subject matter expert in how our application works and communicates with other applications, I get called in to consult by lots of different people. I hope my new boss is happy that I joined the team. I know I’m not the most politically correct person on the team, and could have saved her some embarrassment by wording some of my emails differently. But I bring a lot of skills, strength and effort to the team too.

I’m home on vacation this week, which is always a great way to show to my internal customers and teammates how valuable I am. I expect to have a pile of things waiting for my input when I get back.

Since I can’t afford a cool new car right now, I decided to spend a few bucks tricking out my bike. So far, I’ve purchased and installed:

- saddle bags
- a tachometer
- a softer seat

Yesterday, I ordered some more bits:

- a nice analog clock that bolts onto the handlebars
- a 123 db air horn to replace the tiny tinny little stock horn
- sissy bar and luggage rack, because the saddle bags are pretty small
- 720p HD helmet cam, so I can record and show what it’s like to ride hwy 60 in N Georgia.
- a pair of Grip Puppies (foam handlebar grips)

That helmet cam was a pure whim, but my birthday is coming up, so I decided to go ahead and splurge. Hopefully I actually get more than one use out of it. I’m also looking at custom wheels and a fat back tire, but that’ll require a few days in the shop to get installed, so maybe next fall. Maybe a custom paint job too, just to top it all off! Can you say “slippery slope"? I knew you could.

I’m sitting at the Pep Boys right now waiting for my car to get serviced. The check engine light came on, and it needs an oil change and brakes checked anyway. Hopefully nothing major is wrong with it. 84,400 miles in 8-1/2 years, and it’s still in really good shape. Someday I need to get that scrape on the left rear quarter panel fixed. It’s starting to rust a little. and looks ugly.

Right now, I’m hoping to get another 2-3 years out of this beast, at least, while I save up for my next ride. I’m torn between getting a muscle car to satisfy the male midlife crisis, and an economy box to satisfy my social responsibility and wallet. The rumor that gas prices are going back up into the $4/gal range this summer tends to make me think the Camaro would be a really bad choice right now. But they probably won’t be able to make them in a couple years, what with the EPA mileage requirements going up to 35 MPG by 2016. So this might be my last chance. Sigh.

Saturday, I went and looked at a 2010 Chevy Camaro 2SS (hardtop). Call it my mid-life crisis, but I think it’s a really cool looking car. Unfortunately, I can’t afford it right now, or else I might have driven one home Saturday night. Maybe next year. Right now I need to save up some real $ and work on improving my credit score.