I’ve been in a Cisco Nexus 7000 class this week, and so far, the only thing I’ve learned is that the instructor is smart… but too arrogant for his own good. He claims to have been the network admin for Lehman Brothers within the past few years. I don’t think that’s something I’d be advertising too loudly considering they filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history… If he’d quit putting his foot in his mouth every day, I might get something out of this class. Firefly is supposed to be a good learning company, but apparently they don’t take ego into account in the hiring process.

I got rear ended a few weeks back by someone who apparently didn’t realize those red lights on the back end of my car meant I was using my brakes. This was the first accident I’ve been in since 1990 when a deer ran into my front quarter panel. The deer did less damage too… $1,200 for a new windshield, new driver’s side mirror and paint. This guy took out my taillight, finish trim and crimped the quarter panel… the body shop says $1,537 and change… I call bullshit. $116 for the lens assembly new… the finish trim is a long piece of fiberglass, so even if they have to paint it, it’s probably only $200-300 (and 3 hand tightened nuts hold it onto the body) and maybe 2 hours to pound out the 1/2″ of the quarter panel that was rolled in. At least it’s his insurance company paying for the damages. The front end of his Tahoe looked a lot worse than my car did… my guess is $3-4K in damage on his side. At least it was white against white… my car’s 15 years old, so you can’t hardly tell where he hit my bumper.

The weather’s been indecisive at best lately… Almost every storm for the past 4 weeks has weakened over us or split and gone north or south of us. We finally got a halfway decent lightning show last night with some torrential rain for about an hour. The clouds were too low, so the lightning just looked like white sheets instead of distinct lightning bolts. I charged the camera up to take some more lightning pictures, but the clouds pretty much made it a worthless cause. Hopefully something severe will come along in the next week or two and I can go get some good lightning pictures.

The motorcycle is sitting here staring at me begging to be ridden… but between the weather and my own mistakes, it’s going to be sitting here for at least another week or so. I failed to put the battery on a maintainer over the winter, so once I got it cleaned up and checked out to ride, it wouldn’t start. The battery won’t take a charge, so it’s time for a new one. I don’t quite understand why my 180 CCA motorcycle battery costs more than my 660 CCA car battery… and the motorcycle battery is less than half the size. Oh well, I’ll end up paying it… The bike has to get out soon. It’s almost paid off too, which makes me a happy camper, since it’s a 2009 Kawasaki!