Just enough, Skateboarding 10 miles, With an Ardvark, Annual Directv Sunday Ticket Frustration, Underperforming, Awful audio
So for the third week in a row I decided to skip running. That, with my plans to do no resistance training this week at the gym or at home is part of my experiment to see how my body reacts. My fatigue was definitely lessened last week. Now if I can get this dull right side pain to vanish…
Since I did mowing on Tuesday night I figured I could get away with not mowing this weekend. The grass was starting to look just a little ratty in spots so to reach a mental compromise, after I mowed down the front drainage ditches I just mowed the immediate mound around the house so at least that looked freshly manicured. Doing that should be sufficient to keep my inner taskmaster at bay until next weekend when a full yard maintenance is required.
Mid-morning Saturday I pushed off for a DD ride on a vehicle I never tried before on that 10 mile journey, my electric skateboard. The posted top range on the Meepo is 11 miles so my hope was I would have enough juice to make it there and have Cindy pick me up afterward. Riding the board in the bike line which is filled with small pebbles and various debris was challenging, requiring close attention to the road surface in front of me at all times. Even a small rock feels big when you hit it with a solid urethane wheel.
The board performed surprisingly well. The majority of the ride I was traveling 16mph+and topped out just under 20 mph several times. Despite traveling 10 miles, the battery indicator light still had 2 of 4 leds lit by the time I got there. It was a different and fun ride.
Later in the afternoon I decided to tackle an annual task that I never look forward to, reactivating my Directv Sunday Ticket football package. When you are a normal Directv customer this is easy, you just turn it on. However when you are a special, grandfathered in account like me that ONLY has the Sunday Ticket, it’s a pain in the ass. Each year I wind up spending tons of time on the phone until I finally get someone involved that actually has the knowledge and permissions to reactivate the service on my account.
It’s been such a hassle that I have asked that the procedure is documented in my account notes in detail. Even with that preventative effort I still wound up spending a total of nearly 90 minutes on the phone getting it sorted out. If you watch my Sunday ride video I talk about the latest chapter of the ordeal in detail. The cliff notes version was it does now work once again although I was told I HAD to bump up to the more expensive Sunday Ticket MAX package to do so, which I don’t really believe. Regardless I am once again signed up for the service, if I had any other way to get Eagles games I would sign up in a second.
Cindy and I went out to see the new Predator movie Saturday night. I have always been a big fan of the series. When we walked into the theater we were happy to see there were hardly any other bodies in the seats. I lately have been picking the two seats in a top row corner to keep us as far away from other annoying human beings as possible. When the movie started there were less than a dozen people in the theater and of course 75% of them were in our row….
And of course these people all annoyed us. There was the man that brought his two young children to an R rated movie that had intense gore, violence, and very adult humor. Great parenting there when you have to explain to your child what “F my face with an ardvark” means. Then we had the young couple only a couple seats over from us. The girl had her phone sitting in her cup holder so she wouldn’t miss a single crucial notification on her iPhone during the movie and the both of them were talking repeatedly, not that the movie required intense concentration to follow. Cindy was on my right so she was closer to the annoyances than I was and she was clearly annoyed. I told her multiple times we could just move to one of the vast uninhabited areas of the theater but she wanted to just stay put.
The movie itself was entertaining enough but certainly could not come close to achieving the same impact as the original, although they definitely did try to draw a lot of parallels. It was a B flick for me.
Early Sunday morning, somewhere between 5 and 530 I felt the bed shaking. I put my hand on Elsa and could feel the shaking was her. She had been having some diarrhea issues so I suspected the worst. I shot out of bed and told Elsa to come with me. As we ran towards the slider to the patio she was farting. As we crossed over to the patio she let loose there as well as follow up on the grass outside. I was thankful she was able to hold on until getting on the patio. I felt terrible as she stood in prolonged squat position, looking scared and miserable.
Cindy came out as well and said she would stay out in the main area . She encouraged me to go back to bed and try to sleep which I did but did not expect to be successful at. I did eventually dose off for a few more ZZZ’s which surprised me.
Mid-morning I did my second PEV DD ride in as many days, this time on my new 18L. I wanted to get another long ride in to verify that I was getting solid range from my new battery back. At the end of a 26.6 mile ride I was still showing to have 43-44% battery remaining which is very solid. During the ride I talked a ton of different topics, you may find it interesting to follow along, or not.
So I watched the Eagles game, partly on the TV and part on my computer, something I can now do since I am paying for the Sunday Ticket MAX package. Both viewpoints depicted the same story, an under performance on both sides of the ball. The offense just looked inept most of the time. Nick Foles who ended last season looking so confident and in command seems much less so so far this season although he did make some good throws late in the game. But the defense really stunk up the joint yesterday, making journeyman QB Mike Fitzpatrick look like Joe Montana, he torched the Eagles up and down the field the entire game.
Deshaun Jackson once again lit up the Eagles. It’s funny, since Chip Kelly cut Jackson years ago, he has gone on to have a pretty average at best career however that seems to change everytime he goes up against his old team. Repeatedly has had big games against the Eagles when was with the Redskins and now he continued that trend as a Buccaneer. The Eagles seemed to have no answer as Deshaun put up huge numbers.
I still think the offense is really hurting from not having Alshon Jeffrey in the lineup. Having him in there means opposing teams are less able to double up on Zac Ertz and Agholor since Jeffrey is a legitimate number one wide receiver. I’m not sure what the answer is for the defense that usually employs a soft zone in their bend but don’t break strategy. Unfortunately they did a lot of breaking yesterday. I’m not really sure what to expect from this season but if I am being honest, I’m not that worried about it. The shine of last year’s Super Bowl win will take a long time to go dim in my eyes.
Last night I did my seventh live stream with Marty. Unfortunately the episode was plagued by bad audio. During the first 15 minutes we had no audio being heard by the stream for Marty even though I could hear him fine. When I tried to fix it I somehow wound up turning my voice into a bizarre sounding space alien. Eventually we got it so we both could be heard but the end result was Marty’s audio still sounding pretty bad since I had to use the mic in the web cam to get it to work at all.
There were a number of changes since the last broadcast that potentially could be the source of the problem. I have a new headset/mic and also had performed updates on both Xsplit and Skype, both of which are used in the production. Sometime before the next broadcast we will need to do a test broadcast to see if we can get it all sorted out.