A quick list of damaged parts that requires replacing:

Fuel tank, radiator, front fender, headlight mount, headlight trim, both rear view mirrors (Kyle is giving me his set), and indicator shell.

Parts that can be repaired without replacement:

Right turn signal, gear shift lever, forkstop, headlight frame, clutch lever, and rear hand grip.

Spent about 30 minutes going over the damages with Foohey, with him making suggestions on how to go about making Enigma One ride-worthy with minimum cost. So far the consensus is to order the necessary parts from the dealership, and then making the repairs ourselves (including Kyle if need be). At first I was skeptical about this path, but after going through each component with him, I see the possibilities. The only thing we won't be able to do is repair the forkstop, which is something we will have to take up to a machine shop to weld onto the fork.

After all is said and done, I'd have to admit that I got off light from the accident. My collarbone is well on its way to full recovery. The bike, while looking pitiful, could have been in a less favorable condition.

That said, I hereby vow that Enigma One will rise again to assist me in smiting evil where ever it might appear and ensure that all that is good shall not be harmed.

Called up Foohey hoping to set up a time to take a look at bike, but nobody answered. Guess I'll try again later.

Modifications to the 2nd DDR pad has been completed. Now to try a full deployment at Taylor-Max. . .

Quincy VII is on the fritz again. Got some new IDE drive cables with which I'm hoping will fix the problem. Time will tell.

But at least OC3 is now tidied up. My wardrobe has finally been adjusted to reflect certain changes, and minor modifications have been implemented to various decorations.

Rather than risking another trip on the bumpy Assault Transport, I had my evil twin take a small vacation so that I can get a ride home. This was not done totally in self-interest, as he had to swing by the Georgetown FD to see the possibility of signing up with them.

I'm currently modifying the DDR pads for improved stability, and so far the prototype looks good. There's going to be a test run later tonight after the ACM Officer's meeting, so we'll see how that goes.

Calima was quite distressed at my extended away time, so she promptly tore up the place. I've managed to repair most of the damages, and I hope to keep things clean that way.

On the trip back to OC3, Evil Twin decided to have a fun conversation with an acquaintence of his in Florida. Somewhere along the conversation she invited me to go down there for Fright Night at Disneyland in late September. If my schedule allows, I might just take her up on that.

However, the pads were not as solid as I had originally hoped for, but nothing a couple of wooden boards and some duct tape can't fix. Muwahahaha. . .

Unfortunately the broken collarbone is inhibiting my mad DDR skillz significantly, so I may have to wait a few more weeks before I can fully appreciate this new training regimen.

Also decided to post the rough draft I have of the definition of a Paladin. Much work is still required of that piece, but I figured it can't hurt to garner constructive criticism.

Preparing to head back to Camelot Command tomorrow, so may or may not be updating over the weekend. We'll see.

After a quick exchange of emails with the Anshin representative, I decided to go ahead and risk this venture. However, as I got there around 5:15PM (we agreed to meet around 5:00PM), he had already left the building. Guess we'll try again tomorrow.

Swung by Four Hands and picked up a couple of items I had left behind previously. I think that's pretty much it for severing ties.

Spent the rest of the evening helping out at the ACM company night for National Instruments. Munched on free pizza before heading home for the night. Right shoulder muscles began spasming due to exhaustion towards the end, so maybe I shouldn't be walking around without the sling. . .

So after I have had time to sleep on this matter some what, I am forced to deal with the beginnings of certain feelings for Patricia after I spent the whole day with her yesterday. She's uncannily bright, subtly intelligent, seductively beautiful, plagued with a checkered past, and yet ever so out of reach. Knowing my luck though, I am reading WAY TOO MUCH into this. Besides, I'm on pretty good terms with her ex-BF, and I'm not about to sacrifice one for the other (although I could already be doing that). Matters being as they are, this requires more deliberation, so I will sit here and ponder on this a while more (as if I have anything else to do with my time. . .).

Recon One finally reported back today. Turns out Anshin Corp does have a legit base of operations up in Dallas, so that's a major point of credibility in their favor. I'm sending a email inquiry regarding some minor financial details and I will make a final decision based on that. Here's hoping it all goes well. . .

So we hopped over to the mall and checked out the Dell kiosk they had set up, and scanned through Dell's current offerings. The salesperson was enthusiastic, but not incredibly knowledgeable about what he was selling, so I suggested we head over to some of the smaller shops I know of where we could find better prices. A few car trips later, I found her a slightly used Dell Optiplex GX150 (1Ghz/256MB/20GB/DVD-CDRW) with a 17" "flat" CRT for a little over $700. I thought it was a pretty good deal considering we've only shopped around for a day. We then spent the rest of the afternoon prepping the system (I loaded the software and helped her take apart the monitor so she could spray paint it black), had dinner over at the ACM house with Shrew, Ketan, and Long, and wrapped up the night by testing her flat panel speakers. All in all a relatively busy day.

Afterwards we spent the rest of the afternoon at Al/Austin/Dan/Chris/Crystal's apt complex's pool (yes, I swam with my damaged collarbone, so shoot me).

Instead, due to popular demand I decided to tackle my writer's block and work on my autobiography some more. This resulted in the modification of one section, and the near-completion of another.

Then Shrew, Ketan, and Long came over and we watched Resident Evil. Mmmm. . . Milla. . . mmm. . . And then Ketan fell in love with the dual-gun setup I have with Time Crisis II on my PS2. All in all not too bad of a day. . . perhaps a little dull, but not too bad. Arm is feeling better, although I still have very little endurance on my right shoulder. . .

Finally recieved a response from the University's Parking & Transportation Gestapo regarding my appeals, and I'm undecided as to whether I won or lost. The first ticket with the $20 fine was upheld, but the second ticket with the $50 fine was reduced to a warning. So I guess one could say its a tie, but I'm wondering if $20 is worth appealing it again (they insist you pay the fine anyways even if you intend to appeal again). Anybody want to share with me their thoughts on this?

Have not heard back from my scout unit that I sent to recon this Anshin Corp. . . I think I may have to mobilize a SAR team. . . hmm. . . curiouser and curiouser. . .

Decided to step outside for the evening and attend the ACM Junior Officers Introduction Meeting. Hung out with the group, and made sure we didn't scare too many prospective JOs out the door. It was definitely a relief from being cooped up in the base all day.

Just got back from dinner with Jen (Maudie's fajitas are good stuff), where I got a earful about how bad her co-workers were. Suggested that she find a new employement opportunity, but she's adamant that she will prevail. Other than that, we conversed about various things until she had to go home and work on homework.

This whole thing about being the anniversary of the terror that struck America still bugs me. Too much self-righteousness and pride and not enough self-criticism and reasoning. Its a recipe for disaster. Criminal investigations usually try to find motive and means. The means were obvious. But I truly believe the investigators did a shoddy job in revealing the motive. There is a lot more there than meets the eye.

Interview went fairly smoothly. It was a group interview consisting of one interviewer and three interviewees, except there wasn't much interviewing going on. Basically, the company itself is based in Dallas, but is currently expanding, thus causing the opening of a Austin-based branch office. But in order for the buisness to be profitable, they need several technically-inclined people to fill the human resources pool. That's where we come in. The only stipulation they had regarding the hiring process is that we are able to complete, or have already completed, a Level One Sair Linux Certification (Linux Certified Administrator). There are two ways to go about doing this: take the class and then the exams ($3150), or study at home and take the exams ($600 for the exams and $160 for the text). Upon reciept of certification and after 90 days of employment, they refund you the costs of tuition ($3150 or $600, depending on route you chose), and life goes on. The catch is those who sign up for the class are guaranteed via a written contract for one of the 25-30 vacancies. This being the only requirement they had, it does not seem like such a bad deal to me. . . although I'm doing some research into this to determine the future benefits/costs. . .

After the interview, I headed to Four Hands to formally turn in my two-week's notice. Apparently the only reason I haven't heard back from the owners of the company is because they're out of the country and indisposed. As much as I would like to wait for a response from them before I move on, my life is not their's to put aside and sit quietly. Life goes on, people move on. Besides, there are way too many new faces (replacing the "good" old ones, not because the company is expanding) for me to be comfortable. And unfortunately enough of the "bad" old faces are still there to make me even more uncomfortable. Oh well.

Now. . . what to do about this $42k/year opportunity. . . decisions decisions. . .

Went ahead and added a new script to the site. It is a picture gallery script, meant to assist in dynamic generation of web pages for viewing pictures. I think it works alright, even though I had to go back and generate thumbnails for all those photos and rewrite some of the captions. Let me know if it was worth the effort. Loading times may be a bit more now in the pictures section due to numerous thumbnails.

Got a preliminary damage report from Foohey (where Enigma One is currently stored), and it doesn't sound too good. There is quite a bit of component damage that will need to be worked on, and apparently there was some minor structural damage after all. I'm arranging a time later this week to go over there and take a look for myself.

The expedition from Camelot Command arrived safely back home a few minutes ago. Got a confirmation from them via hypercom right before I posted this. They were trying their darnest to impose a recall order, and was close to succeeding by wooing me with a buisness idea that I had thought up several years back. I'm not biting the hook yet. . .

Decided to jump on a last minute deal to get a label printer for very very cheap ($10 instant rebate, $20 discount, $15 mail in rebate, when the printer itself was only $40). I shall now go and enjoy my new label printer. And yes, Calima will get labeled. *evil laughter*

The expedition from Camelot Command arrived, and resupply operations have commenced. They're still trying to execute a recall order, but I'm still denying them the opportunity to do so.

Finally loaded all the strategic / tactical simulation programs on Quincy VII today, but it seems that there is still some operational instability in the system. It seems that it involves the network card, since everything fails as soon as network connection is lost. Further testing will be required to determine if this is in fact the cause of problems, but it will have to wait until my arm gets better.

I've also decided to begin plans to rebuild Enigma One, so as soon as Monday arrives I will be executing plans to repair Enigma One. Hopefully it won't hurt too much.

Camelot Command is still trying to recall me, and I'm still fighting tooth and nail to cancel that order. They'll be sending an expedition down here for tomorrow and Sunday, so we'll see how that goes.

Apparently Ryan finally got his motorcycle ('99 Yamaha R6), but its not finalized yet. He better take the rider's course before riding that puppy.

Got an empty email from Jen, so decided to call her instead of relying on a simple reply. Traded a few jabs about my current disabled condition, and agreed to meet sometime next week for coffee or food or all of the above.

The doc was definitely on the nice side. After finding out that I did not have health insurance, and was planning to pay everything out of pocket, he ate the cost of the X-Rays and let me walk out of my first visit for free. Honestly can't really complain, even though I waited for over an hour to see him.

Finally got a hold of An about the police reports, an apparently all he got was a form with which I could recieve the actual report. Guess I'll do that later since me and the bike are the only injured parties, unless that dead tree I slammed into has a insurance policy that warrants a settlement.

Seriously dreading the hospital bills. Current estimates have it up towards $1100-$1200, give or take a few hundred. Have not had a chance to call the insurance company up yet on what my options are because I haven't been able to track down An who is in possession of the police reports. Guess that'll have to wait.