Archives December 2003

Xmas pics, gym odor

I finally got around to uploading the Xmas day pictures, enjoy.

At the gym today I was doing sitting cable rows which just happens to be next to the water fountain. 3 guys came up to get water at the same time. In seconds a disgusting, pungent, overwhelming stench of extreme BO hit me. Of course the first thing is to confirm it isn’t from yourself, after doing that I turned my attention to the guys at the fountain. The smell was absolutely putrid, I have no idea how the offender can stand the smell of himself. I couldn’t determine exactly which one was the culprit so in the future I’ll be doing wide circles around all 3 of them. How can you stink that bad and not know it? Nasty…..

Tivo hacking, New Years, Year recap

In yet another chapter in my attempt to further my geek career I did some additonal modifications to my Tivo last night. I can now telnet to it, ftp to it as well as control it via a web browser. In the Tivo hacking community these tricks are very tame in comparison to some of the things that can be done but for me, it was cool just the same. Now if I forgot to set the Tivo up to grab something I can hop on a web browser anywhere and set it up. Very cool, at least to me it is. 🙂

We have no big New Year’s plans. As of now we are planning to hit one or two of the local firework shows that are going on. Alison and I were trying to remember if they ever did fireworks at New Year back home. The only time we could remember it happening was for the bicenquinquangenary thing (spelling). Down here they have them every year. We should be back home in time to see good ole Dick drop the ball.

New Years is the time for resolutions, reflections and lamenting the passing of another year faster than the last. Oh wait maybe the lamenting part is just something I do. 2003 was an up and down year for me, here are the noteables.

2003 Highlights

Carnival Cruise
Addition of Nicki to our family
Green Bay Trip
Miami / Eagles game
Getting Mom moved down from PA
265
Finally getting braces

2003 Lowlights

Buick blaze
Pottstown Rumble Cancellation
Ball Hog Rainout
Eagles NFC Championship Loss
Sentra 2003 purchase fiasco
Another year older

We knocked out a number of major home improvements this past year. The big ones included installing gutters around the entire house, getting the storage shed, having the driveway concreted, tiling various areas inside the house and completing the landscaping around the pool as well as a couple dozen other smaller projects.

I never really proclaim official resolutions for the new year but if I had to make a short list for next year it would include:

Be in better shape than the previous year (eternal resolution)
Find a way to allow Alison to quit the job she hates and work part time from home
Be less busy with home projects and enjoy more of what our area has to enjoy
Be happy

2004 could be a big year of change and hopefully for the better. Happy New Year everyone.

Gym, more Return of Kings questions

That big oaf that was part of my most awkward gym moment ever was there today. I acted like I never saw the guy before in my life. F him.

I am still hung up on the wimpy Gandolph role in the final movie. When he reappeared in number 2, he could create blinding light, swat away arrows and make swords glow red hot. In the final orc battle he was hitting orcs with his stick. No use of magic whatsoever, makes no sense to me.

And why did Sauramon lose his powers just cause the tree dudes flooded out his pit? That seemed odd.

Holiday recap, Football, Puppy horror, Lord of Rings marathon

The 4 day Xmas weekend has come and gone. The post xmas letdown is in effect although it isn’t terribly severe. I had a good weekend, mostly. On Christmas Eve we went to the neighbors for dinner. Like our prior experience there, the amount of food was incredible. We had 9 people total, there was enough food to feed 30, at least. We had a nice dinner, eating way more than we should. We got home after 10 and went to bed shortly thereafter. I didn’t really have a ton of anticipation that the next day was Christmas. That Florida winter effect was mostly responsible I think.

On Christmas day I slept LATE, 6:30 am. That is very late for Christmas. However, I was the first one up so I took the dog out, ate my breakfast, turned on the tree lights and the train and waited for mom and Ali to get up. Mom got up shortly after me, Ali not until around 7:30. The gift exchange was fun, I got way more than I expected. It was a bit of a bummer because obviously Ali and I buy a lot more for each other than we do for mom so we were opening 4 or 5 presents for every one mom did. Ali liked her stuff even though the majority of it were different books. Her two big gifts from me were a mp3 player to replace the one that was stolen from the gym and a gift certificate for a half day spa package. (repeat gift from last year) I got several dvd’s I wanted, a few xbox games (including a replacement from Nicki for the one she destroyed), several new indoor volleyball’s, replacement floormats for the Tacoma, and a way cool clock that displays the time with pins that I asked for. All very cool stuff.

We made and received a number of family phone calls and we spent some time cleaning up the carnage from present opening. We decided that in preparation for going to see Return of the King on Friday we would watch 1 and 2 first. In total we spent 9 plus hours watching Lord of the Rings movies. So we fired up number one, 3 hours or so later we finished up just in time to get ready for dinner number two at the neighbors. Again, there was way too much food. I wasn’t really into it. I just didn’t feel like being social for whatever reason. I think all the gluttony was bothering me as well. To keep things interesting I brought Nicki over to join the party. She ran wild and was the entertainment. Ali was really enjoying the family atmosphere but I was ready to head home. Once we went home, the post holiday thing set in and I realized that even though Xmas was fun it just didn’t really feel like Xmas. Just something I have to deal with, it’ll never be as good as it once was.

Friday was Lord of the Rings Day. We spent the morning watching Two Towers, another 3 hour investment. In retrospect it was helpful to watch one and two again to refresh the storyline for us. That afternoon we went to see Return of the King. This was the longest of the trilogy, clocking in at about 3 hours and 20 minutes. It was very good, certain parts drug on a bit but it was an impressive flick. I did have a couple questions that possibly could be answered here. (possible spoiler so skip to next paragraph if you don’t want to know ANYTHING about the movie) Why did Gandolph not use any magic in the epic battles in the end? He is beating guys with a stick and hand to hand combat, yet he is a wizard? Why not use his uber magic to kill bunches of orcs at once? Is the ghost warrior thing part of the original book? That part of it was kind of dumb to me, Aragorn brings his ghost buddies with to kick ass. The part where Sam is rushing up the orc tower to save Frodo was silly. The orcs just happen to fight each other and in the process clean out the entire tower for Sam? And finally, where are they going on the boat at the end? My wife said it was to go die but that make no sense, why would the Elves be going since they never die and Gandolph who has lived for hundreds of years? And why would Frodo be shipping off to die? Any wisdom on these issues would be appreciated. 🙂

Saturday was housework day. We cleaned and organized. We got word from Mom that she was a go for her new place and in fact had a key to it already! She will be moving within a couple weeks! It will be wierd to have her out but I think it will workout better for all of us. She will be a stone’s throw from work and the beach which will relieve a lot of stress for her. We will go back to a more normal existence. My mom tries to be as unobtrusive as possible but it’s impossible to not have issues in a situation where you are living with a parent. We also got word that Alison’s good friend and her daughter were coming down for a last minute visit this upcoming weekend. So we had to clean out the spare bedroom that was filled with all sorts of junk as it had become our repository for anything that we did not currently have a place for. We had all of the labor done by around 2 or 3pm, not bad. That included my organizing the garage and washing both of our vehicles.

Saturday evening the Eagles played. It was an important game because they needed the win to lock up the division title and to ensure they had a first round bye. They smoked the Redskins and played well. They still had a shot to win homefield advantage if the Rams managed to lose to the Lions which was very unlikely. BUT, miracles of miracles, they lost! I was cheering on the Lions like they were my team, it was great! The Ram’s choke means all playoff games this year will be home games for the Birds. Hopefully this year will be their year. The last day of the season saw a lot of wild finishes and big chokes. The Ram’s choke was huge but the Viking’s was equally impressive. All they had to do was beat the lowly Cardinals to get in to the playoffs. Instead, they lost on the last play of the game on a 4th and 24. Unbelievable.

Sunday morning was a puppy horror show. I woke up about 7:30 and was enthusiastically greeted by her. My mom already had let her out. However while I was petting her I noticed she had dried gunk in her fur. What the? I looked at her one stuffed animal that is kept in her crate with her, covered with brown stuff. I shot a glance at her crate. Her pillow is covered in diarrhea, just covered in it. A picture of my face at that very moment would have been classic. I immediately wake up Alison and said, “Nicki needs to get a bath now, she shit her crate!” Those words worked better than any alarm clock has on Ali. She shot up and saw the damage. It was gruesome. We also noticed Nicki’s nose was raw. Evidently she was trying to cover it up by rubbing her nose on the pillow, so much so that it bled. We felt bad for her. Our immediate thoughts were that the switch we just made to adult dog food for her may have had an adverese affect. We drug her into the shower and washed the excrement off. Gross. At one point Ali said to me that I did not need to have such a disgusted look on my face. I asked her if she expected me to have a big toothy grin? I mean come on… We got her clean, Ali threw her bed and stuffed animals in the wash and the worst was over. I decided to not even ask my mom why she was just letting Nicki walk around the house with dried shit on her as opposed to keeping her outside until we did something but decided to not pursue it.

The rest of the day was relaxed. We went for a 3 and half mile walk, I finished Hunter Redeemer (a bit disappointing) and then watched the Lions win, flew my plane a bit and enjoyed the day. The weather all weekend was just about perfect. Mid 70’s, open up the windows, this is why we moved to Florida weather.

I did frequently check the news sites over the weekend hoping I would not see news of any terrorist events popping up. Thankfully, the big holiday attack they feared didn’t materialize but unfortunately we will probably always be on permanent alert, anyday could be the next disaster.

Long recap but what did you expect after a 4 day weekend. I have another one coming up this weekend, woohoo.

Holiday Happiness

Christmas Eve is here! Christmas is by far my favorite holiday. I have all of my shopping done. Tonight and tomorrow we are going over to the next door neighbors house for a meal with them and their family. It should be fun.

Every holiday season seems to come around faster each year. They seem to all run into each other after awhile. The most memorable are the ones that happened sometime around the period when I was between 8 and 12. Grandma, Grandpa, Great Grandma, Aunt Sis, Uncle Randy, Uncle Butch, Aunt Stephanie, Steve, & Jen, would all come over to our small farmhouse on Christmas Eve. Christmas eve rocked because it was the height of anticipation of the entire year. The christmas break from school had just started so I had 2 weeks of nothing but playing with my new toys ahead of me. Pure bliss. Mom would have the table lit with candles, grandpa would complain he couldn’t see the food. The woodstove was burning, keeping the house toasty. The christmas tree seemed larger than life back then even though it was probably only 6 or 7 feet high. Sleeping on Christmas Eve was incredibly difficult. I always would wake up very early, 4am or so. The 2 hours or so before mom and dad would awake was always painfully long. Then the moment arrived when we could go downstairs, turn the corner and be amazed how the tree that had nothing around it last night was surrounded by presents! Santa was awesome. 15 minutes of fanatical wrapping paper destruction later, it was over. What a rush. After my parents began divorce proceedings when I was 12 or so, Christmas was never the same. I still looked forward to it but it was changed after that.

Nowadays, I still have a tendency to wake up early on Christmas. I enjoy present exchanges but enjoy when others open my gifts more than vice versa. Most of the anticipation and excitement has been replaced with appreciation for having a day or two off and relief from surviving the financial onslaught the holidays always puts on our bank account. The tree doesn’t look very big anymore. Many of the relatives I mentioned earlier are either dead or I just don’t keep in touch with.

The best part of Christmas is the increase in goodwill you come across day to day. Most people are generaly happier, friendlier and the world is a better place to walk through during the holidays. I hope everyone has a great holiday season. Peace on Earth, good will to men…..

Grape Nuts, Disney pics

In my never ending quest to be healthier I decided to pick up a box of Grape Nuts at the grocery store. High fiber, little of the bad stuff a smart choice. Blech. They should call it breakfast cement. The stuff looks like little pebbles. When you add milk, no matter how much milk, it soaks it all up and expands in size. You are left eating a bowl of what looks like concrete mix with little to no taste. Not recommended.

The pics are up from Disney. I started out on fire, snapping pics left and right. As the day wore on my inspiration faded as my thoughts turned to warming up. Enjoy.

Disney, Fast Pass, Puppy destruction, Eagles, Timeshares, CV II atrocity

A three day weekend filled with ups and downs. This was Ali’s birthday weekend. She is 30 this year so we needed to do something out of the ordinary. A few months ago I got a fax at work for government employees about a special weekend package. At the time I did not realize it was a timeshare promotion, that was explained to me later. For a reduced rate we got 2 nights at a hotel and 2, one day passes to the parks. (somehow I interpreted this as 2 one day passes for 2 days, more later on that)

Check in wasn’t until 4pm so we were in no rush to leave Friday morning. We didn’t pull out until around 1. An average speed of tween 80 and 85 got us there in just about 3 hours, good time. When we checked in we were directed to the “special” guest relations office. At this office we had to present ID, a credit card and had to sign a form that said we were married, made at least 50k between us and that we weren’t lying about it. No big deal. We got directed to our hotel, a nice, new Country Inn suites. Our room was fine, right across from the game and exercise room and was on the first floor.

After we unloaded we/I came up with a gameplan. Within the first half hour we went to the exercise room for a quick 20 or 25 minute workout. Yea odd I guess, but I figured it was the only time I would get during the weekend so I went with it. Afterwards we went out to eat at Outback. A very nice dinner and we were back to the hotel by 9. I got to catch Christmas Vacation for the second time this season. Love the movie, never tire of it. During it they advertised that Saturday night they were showing Xmas Vacation II!!! Wow I never knew there was a second one! More on that later. We hit bed to prepare for our big day tomorrow.

Our timeshare presentation was early, 8am. We knew nothing really about timeshares except that normally when you hear people talk about them it is in a negative manner. We sat down and prepared for the hard sell. We didn’t realize it was a one on one thing, we assumed it was a group thing. Nope, our sales rep summoned us. He was actually quite nice, no hard sell, and the facilities were new and impressive. His pitch was a good one, good enough that we actually tossed the idea around a bit. But when we asked for a few minutes to talk it over ourselves we tossed around the numbers and realized it would be ludicrous for us to jump into something like that right now. We don’t vacation much, we are trying to knock off long term debt not add to it and the holidays were not the time to throw done a big downpayment on a timeshare. We informed our sales rep of our decision, he came back with some other lower cost alternatives but we respectfully declined. He was a good guy. We got our card stamped and headed down to get our tickets. The ticket clerk said what park do you want your tickets to? I said MGM and Magic Kingdom. He gave me a puzzled look. He said you want one ticket for MGM and one for Magic Kingdom? I said no, one set of tickets for Magic Kingdom and one set for MGM. Wrong! Somehow, someway I totally misread what we were supposed to get. On our paper it says in black and white, you get 2 free one day passes to any Disney park. I managed to get it in my head that we were getting 2 sets of one day passes. My bad, oh well. We quickly decided to use the passes for Magic Kingdom. At least that meant I could get home on Sunday to watch the Eagles.

We were ready to hit the park, but boy was it cold. The forecast high was only 55. I had on a t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a sweatshirt. Ali was layered up as well. Once we got to the park it was painfully clear we were underdressed. Our first stop was the gift shop where we found Ali a knit hat and gloves. I said I didn’t need any additional covering. The park was decorated for Christmas, very pretty. Our idea that the park wouldn’t be that full since the kids JUST got out for xmas break quickly evaporated. The park was packed, armies of couples pushing strollers rolled down the crowded walkways. A loosely organized mob scene.

Our morale was still high, hey we were in Disney at xmas, who cares if it is in the 40’s and it’s packed? We went to hit our first ride, Buzz Lightyear spinning adventure thingy. The line was huge so we decided to take advantage of “Fast Pass”. Fast Pass is a system Disney has to make waiting in line easier. You go to a ride, get a fast pass that basically says come back in an hour or two and you can get in the fast line, minimizing your wait time. But there is a catch, you can only have one fast pass at a time, meaning you can’t go to all the popular rides, get your fast passes and then come back to get in all the quick lines. Instead you get your fast pass and then you have an hour or two to kill so you wind up going and standing in a different line. Don’t get me wrong, without fast pass you would be standing in long lines for EVERY ride instead of every other ride but I wish they let you load up on the fast passes, it would make it much better. It didn’t take very long for us to realize that with only one park to visit, we picked the wrong one. The rides were generally tame and on the boring side for adults. The best ride was Space Mountain and that is a million years old. Everything else was unmemorable. The Haunted Mansion didn’t even get a scream out of Ali so you know it was lame. In total we rode maybe 6 or 7 rides. The cool weather really sucked some of the fun out of the entire process. We spent a lot of time hopping into the gift shops just to take some of the chill off. It might of made it into the 50’s for about an hour out of the day. Speaking of the gift shops, I have never seen so much as Ali terms it, “Crappity crap” You know, the kind of stuff you buy for yourself or someone else that is basically stuff you’ll never use, costs a bunch and is more or less a waste of money. It is staggering all of the different Disney related products they have for sale. We broke down and got mom some Mickey Mouse wine glasses but at least we know she will use those.

Around 5:30 we both agreed we had our fill. We were cold and worn out from doing battle with the Disney mob all day. We hopped the tram and both agreed MGM was where we should have went. We piled into the car and threw the heat on full blast. Even though we didn’t have a great time in Disney, it wasn’t through any fault of the park itself. The park is immaculate, the attention to detail is amazing and any employees we interacted with were courteous and helpful. We went back to the room, cleaned up and then went to Olive Garden for a good dinner.

We got back to the hotel in time to catch the last half of Christmas Vacation II. It took all of 45 seconds to realize this was a horrible attempt to cash in on the good name of it’s predecessor. Mind you I missed the first hour but here is what I gathered. Somehow Randy Quaid got marooned on a desert island for xmas. The only characters from the original that are in this atrocity are Quaid, the women from SNL that played his wife, their dog Snot and the girl that played Chevy’s daughter in one of the flicks. (not the xmas one) This is a recent production so Randy Quaid is now a fat, saggy looking old man trying to reenact his role from 20 years ago. Words can’t really describe how bad this movie was. It may be the worst xmas movie I have ever seen. Way worse than Emmet Otter Jugband’s Xmas, the prior leader in the pack of bad xmas specials. If you ever get a chance to see Xmas Vacation II, just watch 5 minutes of it to see how bad it is, I can’t believe National Lampoon would allow their name to be put on it.

Sunday morning we popped up, well rested, ate our continental breakfast and rolled out. A record setting 2 hours and 45 minutes to our exit later, we were home. We got home about 12:15, just in time for the Eagles! Nope, they don’t play till 4:15! Argh I should have checked the schedule. So we used the down time to unpack , get things in order and survey the damage that was done by the dog. Nicki followed up her present destroying session by chewing the remote to the big screen tv to bits. We are still missing 1 AA battery that we are hoping she didn’t swallow. She will be spending much more time in her crate when we are away until she earns my trust again.

4:15 rolled around so it was game time. The Eagles didn’t play a very strong game and got beat in the end on a bad interception. I am disappointed but after their horrid start I can’t complain that they just blew getting the best record in the NFC by one game. Unfortunately, this loss probably will throw a wrench into any possibilities of a Super Bowl appearance but hopefully they can prove me wrong once again. The wearing Eagles garb good luck charm thing finally failed. If they find a way to lose to the Redskins next week we have some big problems.

Long recap……sorry.

Let it snow, let it snow…..

My luck

One of the three presents that Nicki ripped into was destroyed. Wouldn’t you know it would be a football game for the Xbox I had asked for. The case was chewed apart and the back of the disc is scratched to hell. It’s funny how dogs know when they did something bad. She looked very guilty.

Copter crash, disney weekend

I rushed home to try some test flights with the toy copter I got for my bday. I charged it up quick, took it outside and squeezed the trigger. That is the only control, 1 trigger. Hmmm wonder how u make it turn? I found out you don’t. Up it goes, probably 100 feet high in no time. The light breeze started pushing it away from me rapidly. Hmm if I let the trigger go it will lose speed and crash, if I keep it going full throttle it is going to fly away to who knows where. So I start walking after it. It’s now across the street and up the road. Once it crosses the road I see it is above a vacant, high grassed lot so I decide to ditch it there. I let go of the trigger and down it goes, rapidly, behind some trees out of my site. I run over there and hit the trigger so I can hear the motor. I managed to find it quickly with no damage other than some tall grass wrapped around the rotor. Whew. Later that night I watch the instructional video. It says the way you change direction is to slow down the copter so the tail rotor starts to spin it and then when it spins to where you want it, gun the trigger again. Hardly an exact science. It’s a bit of a bummer but I will see if I can get good enough to at least keep the crashes to the controlled nature type.

Tomorrow we are going to Disney for a three day weekend. It is one of those timeshare presentation deals. The way it works is you get a reduced room rate and free passes to any of the Disney parks in exchange for attending a time share presentation. We’ve never done anything similar before but I figure as long as you don’t agree to buy anything there is nothing to lose. It is supposed to be pretty chilly by Fla standards this weekend with temperatures not getting much above 60. However that should be fine weather for walking the parks. It will be cool to see Disney decorated for xmas.

Got a report from mom today that the dog ripped apart several presents. Grrrrrr.