Archives November 2004

Last night I decided to reinstall the toilet into the master bath. The first go around in the smaller bathroom was a waxy, wet mess so I expected no less this time. Well this toilet was more of a mess. Evidently because of the uneven floor, the builder tried to level the toilet by placing it into wet mortar. So as I tried to scrape the old caulking off the toilet I saw that the bottom of the toilet had caked on cement. So I had to chisel off all of the cement first. Getting the toilet lined up over the bolts is a tough duty. As I tried to suspend the toilet over the bolts in an awkward, bent over position, Ali was trying to line up the bolts from floor level. As I was holding the toilet, some excess water ran out all over the floor so we had to towel up the mess. The wax itself grosses Ali out so she was not enjoying being my toilet installer assistant. We finally got it on. It seemed to sit rather high over the drain flange so I was worried we could have leakage issues. However multiple test flushes proved to be successful. Mission accomplished. Tonight I will caulk it and hopefully by tomorrow we can seal the grout and then move stuff back in.

Another 4 day weekend, my 2nd one in 3 weeks. Having a government job really has it’s perks at times. The time went pretty much as predicted which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Thanksgiving morning was spent mostly watching the parade. It was unusually warm in NYC. For some reason, the parade is most entertaining to me when it is frigid. Watching the parade performers battle the elements to try to lip sync with their frozen mouths is just more fun to watch. There were quite a few performers whom I didn’t know. They were mostly the young hip hop/pop performers that are followed by those 20 years younger then me. I actually missed the arrival of Santa Claus in front of Macy’s because of getting ready for our Thanksgiving meal, but it didn’t really bother me all that much.

We went to Mom’s place and got to see her new sofas that replaced a worn out pit sofa. Then it was off for our holiday dinner. The restaurant opened at 1 and we got there about 10 after. It was maybe half full and we didn’t have to wait. Dinner was served quickly, was delicious and we were out of there in no more than 75 minutes. After we took mom back home she had a couple favors for us to do. I asked mom if she wanted to come out to our place and hang out, but she declined. (she seems almost allergic to coming to our place at this point) So we hit the road and headed home. We abandoned our recently established tradition of hitting Kmart after our Thanksgiving meal this year. I had stuff I wanted to do at home. It was nice to eat out again this year but to be honest, I think next year we may return to doing a more traditional holiday dinner at home. I sort of miss it.

Thanksgiving afternoon/evening gave me time to do some of the tiling prep, namely sanding down the existing vinyl floor and pulling the toilet. Sanding the floor gave me an up close and personal view of how uneven the floor was, making for a challenging tiling job. The rest of the night we sort of relaxed and watched some of our traditional Thursday night tv.

Friday was the worst of the tiling days. The measuring of cut tiles, the spreading of thinset and laying the tiles is the worst part of the job. The uneven floor resulted in a less than perfectly flat surface but it is only noticeable if you are looking for it. It’s a messy, grimy, knee burning job. It took all afternoon to finish but considering the amount of cuts I had to do, it was done relatively fast. When we laid the last piece, I was relieved that the worst of the last phase of the tiling project was done. Instead of doing a diagonal pattern like we originally planned, we stayed with the stagger pattern that was used in the other areas. It’s just more visually appealing to us.

On Saturday Ali had to work so I promised her I would get the grouting done without her so I didn’t have to subject her to more of this crap work. The grouting went very well, the longest part of it was doing the wipe down of the tile after the grout dries. You have to be very thorough with cleaning off the excess grout and it gets very tedious. With some of our spare tile we also made a small little tile board that is designed to be part of the elevated area we will be building in Nicki’s dog run. Yea, it’s sappy but will be a cool little personalized thing that we will look back at for years. I even got her paw print in it. I will have some pics of the various stages of the project up during the week. We have 1 more day of wet curing the grout, then we can seal it, replace the toilet and put everything back into the bathroom.

So with the brunt of the tiling project behind me, we wanted to go out Saturday night to see a movie to celebrate. We hit the 20 screen theater with plans to see National Treasure. We figured this was it’s second week out so it shouldn’t be overly crowded. Well we figured with it being thanksgiving weekend, there would be a lot of people there but we underestimated just how many. With a 20 screen theater, there are TONS of movies showing at all times. Well when we got to the ticket window, they had a small hand written note posted that listed a handful of movies that actually had tickets available! National Treasure wasn’t one of them. Damn it. Out of the remaining choices we decided to see Christmas with the Kranks. It was a light, funny, laugh out loud (at times) movie that was a good kick off to the holiday season for us. We both enjoyed it.

My 4 day hiatus had pretty much flown by, by the time Sunday came around. My previous 3 days went very quickly with holiday festivities and tile work. Sunday was a good day. I knocked out a bunch of small outside chores before Ali even got out of bed. Ali and I took the cheesey e-bike on an extended road test. On Wednesday I got a call from a distraught Ali, the chain had jumped off and gotten wedged in the rear wheel, immobilizing the bike. I came and picked her up and got the chain back on, but everytime I did and tested it, it would jump right back off. As I was working on it, I was approached by a guy that was menatally slow, on his bike. He wanted to know all about the bike at first, said he heard they cost like 1500 bucks. I told him, “Not this one” He then went off on a different tangent, telling me how he was retired (even though he looked to be in his 40’s) but he had to sell his van to pay the rent and now he just rides his bicycle. I patiently engaged him in the conversation but soon he was off to the laundromat. So anyway, over the weekend, I flipped the bike upside down and discovered the back wheel was aligned in such a way that it made the chain jump. So I wanted to test the repair with an extended road test. We went to the end of our road and back, about 3 and a half miles. On the ebay ad, the bike is listed as having a cruising distance of 15-20 miles. HAH! By the time we approached our driveway the bike was going at walking speed, on it’s last legs. Cheesy thing, but at least the chain stayed on.

I also worked on very stubborn, frustrating problem on my neighbor’s PC. Watch out if you have an older PC with a SIS 7001 USB controller that has WIndows XP on it. I upgraded this for them last weekend but evidently none of their USB devices worked. I think I have it finally figured out but I won’t know for sure until tonight when I take the PC back.

We settled in for an afternoon of watching Eagles football. The game was almost a duplicate of the Redskins game the week before. The game was close, the Birds were looking shaky, and then late in the game they pulled away to make the final score look very lopsided. They won their division already. I was telling Ali that I can’t remember an Eagles team being 10-1 since I can remember following the team. As a fan, I can’t ask for more so far this year, although if they falter and don’t at least get to the Super Bowl, the season will be below expectations. This team needs to take the next step badly.

The dirt spreading guy showed up on Sunday. Our former huge piles of earth are now flattened out, raising a few areas that used to be underwater during rainy season. Seeing the results makes me want to get more fill, but at these prices I will have to hold off for awhile.

During the day Sunday I got a sudden urge to get a roomba. What is a Roomba? A roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner. Our house is a pet hair nightmare. Between the dog and the cats, even with vacuuming every weekend, the pet hair is just nasty during the week. I had heard of the Roomba for years and just dismissed it as a gimmick, something for people that have nothing better to do with their money. Well now they have improved the technology and the price has dropped to a point where you can jump onboard without breaking a leg. After seeing it in action, I can honestly proclaim it as the best money I have spent on a home appliance, ever. It really is amazing. After I charged it up for 3 hours I set it loose. I spent a good 45 minutes just watching it do it’s thing. I watched it hug the dog bed, go under the recliner, hope chest and cabinets and sweep up dust bunnies that have lived there forever. I watched it get itself unstuck from seemingly sticky spots with ease. It is an incredible piece of engineering. You just hit a button, and it will go off and clean for up to 2 hours, when it’s battery gets low it actually has the brains to go find it’s docking station which is also it’s charger and dock itself. When it was done I pulled the dust bin and was surprised by all the junk it picked up. It works equally well on tile or carpet. This morning we set it loose in our bedroom before we went to work. It is an effortless way to keep the mess under control during the week when you don’t have the time/desire to be vacuuming. I HIGHLY recommend it if you have pets that drop hair like a balding man.

I got a chance to play a lot of Halo 2 over the 4 days. It is an INSANELY good game. Imagine Doom 3 quality graphics with a gripping plot and diverse and addictive gameplay. It is truly fantastic and with the addition of XBOX Live multiplayer, it gives the game another dimension. I went online a few times and got mashed. One particularly funny moment came when I was riding a vehicle, feeling invulnerable as I sped by people on foot and mowed them down. Well an adept player got next to me, jumped on my vehicle, punched me in the head, knocking me off the vehicle and then backed up and ran over me. Even though it was an embarrassing way to get wrecked, I laughed. Just a great game.

Oh I never jumped in the pool. Even though the water was almost 80 degrees, I lacked the inspiration to take the plunge. I will try to atone by doing a XMAS swim.

Only an hour and a half till the holiday weekend commences. Hopefully by the end of these 4 days our bathroom will be tiled and I can put away my wet saw for good.

Even though it is our “busy” season at work, my days have been rather slow. I have things more or less running like a clock so major problems are few and far between. So I have been using the down time to evaluate Virtual Server 2005. It is a MSFT product (more accurately, another software company purchase) that allows you to run multiple OS’s on one machine. Not in a multi-boot configuration, but simultaneously. So I took an old workstation with Windows XP on it and set up virtual sessions of Win2k, NT, Win98 and SUSE Linux. It’s primary use for me at least would be to support our clients that are using older OS’s but in corporate environments there are some interesting possibilities. It seems to be a solid product.

I hope everyone has a great holiday and I’ll be thinking of you as I take my second annual Thanksgiving dive in the pool.

From today’s Naples Police Beat…..Must have been a big getaway car

? Seacoast Supply, 6190 Shirley St., North Naples. Stolen between 4 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Sunday: seven pallets of steel, valued together at $29,500.

The manual is not very big so sadly, I am running out of quotes here is one of the last ones..

More from the mainenance section:

4. Please check the bolt and nut ofterly. Please adjust lenghth of chain if the chain need to adjust. Please add some lube of need to lubricate.

Here are a nice collection of video game commercials from the golden years! This is one of my favorites. 🙂

Thanksgiving has always been a mixed bag as far as holidays go for me. When I was younger, it meant going to grandma’s for a fancy feast. For the occasion she would bring out the gold plated silverware. All of my immediate relatives were there like my great grandmother, Aunt Sis, my cousins and aunt and uncles. The most memorable food item for me was the dried corn. It sort of looked like animal feed in water, but it tasted ok. Before every holiday meal my grandfather would say a short prayer that always ended with “…for without you Lord we’re nothin…. Amen…” After dinner the entertainment options were somewhat limited but we entertained ourselves by watching football on their 19 inch TV, shooting a basketball that desperately needed air at the basketball net mounted on the garage roof, walking the railroad tracks in the back, looking for loose railroad spikes to add to our collection or possibly throwing darts at the dartboard down in the basement. At the time, I remember the event feeling like somewhat of a drag. Today, I wish I would have appreciated the time more, because like all things, it went away and can never be relived again.

As I went into my 20’s, my first wife had a huge family and they were all about the holidays. They had huge get togethers that were organized chaos. I came to really enjoy them at first, towards the end of my marriage I came to despise them for reasons that are not bloggable.

In my late 20’s to early 30’s, my grandmother was now living alone since my grandfather died, in her apartment. Typically, my mom would host dinner with only a handful of relatives and we would bring grandma over. Later in the day we would try to stop by my Dad’s for a secondary dinner as well. Thanksgiving during that time period was ok but wasn’t as interesting as before.

Now since we moved to Florida, Thanksgiving is close to a non-event besides the fact that I get off from work for 2 days. This year our Thanksgiving will go like this: Watch some of the Macy’s parade, go pick up my mom and go out to Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant. In probably less than an hour the entire meal will be over, so we will drop mom off. Go back home. Watch football. Do some tile work. Moving down here does have some definitive drawbacks and the lack of traditional family functions is one big one. I suspect the only way Thanksgiving would regain any of it’s luster is if we would have a child.

There are an amazing onslaught of quality gaming titles being released all at around the same time. Doom 3 was released a few months ago, followed by Star Wars Battlefront. United Offensive add on for Call of Duty came out recently and throw in the long awaited Halo 2 for Xbox and now today World of Warcraft, the new MMOG game from Blizzard based on the Warcraft series. All of these games are outstanding and as a gamer I’d like to be able to immerse myself into each one of them. The downside is to do this requires huge time commitments and with a wife, a house, a dog, tivo and full plate of responsibilities, it seems increasingly difficult to find the time to do so. My days of spending 16 hours playing Bionic Commando are not likely to be returning.

I recently have gotten some cool game titles like Halo 2 and NFL 2K5 for the XBox however I am embarrassed to admit that neither of these titles have gotten much play yet, I am spending most of my gaming time playing a game that is probably most popular with kids 8-12 years old, Mario vs Donkey Kong. It is a surprisingly great game considering the GBA’s dimunitive size and limited horsepower. The gameplay is smooth and it incorporates many aspects from previous Mario titles resulting in one addicting gaming experience. The game requires a good balance of thinking to figure out how to obtain the objective with coordination to pull off the moves. If you think I am just further reverting into childhood, I dare you to try it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I forgot to mention the best thing of all I got from the neighbors, a tractor sprinkler. I don’t know what the official name for it is but that is what it looks like, a tractor. I remember seeing these around for years but never knew how cool they were. It’s made of heavy iron and uses the spinning motion of the sprinkler arms to drive gears that turn the rear wheels ever so slightly each revolution. The front of the tractor has a pulley-like wheel that rides on the hose, like a train on a track. The result is I can lay out my sprinkler track with the hose, turn on the water and forget it. This certainly beats what I was doing up to this point, manually moving a set of 3 sprinkler heads around the house every half hour or so. I most have told Ali half a dozen times how cool this little piece of irrigation engineering was.

On Friday I was browsing the Stern message board where I saw a member posted that anyone could get in on the giveaway Howard was doing on Friday by simply plugging in the numbers on the certificates that were handed out. It’s a nice deal where if you pre-pay for a year of service ahead of time, you got the hardware and and a car kit for free. So after consulting with Ali I jumped online and snagged a kit. Stern may not be on Sirius for over a year yet but there is a good chance it could be sooner. And even if he isn’t on sooner, Sirius has great programming which makes it worth it regardless. I’ll give my full review once it comes in.

On Saturday morning bright and early the first load of dirt rolled in. The truck driver guy was nice at first but then soured when I told him where I wanted the first loads of dirt dumped. He seemed to think he wouldn’t be able to get in and out. I told him other dump trucks had managed just fine. So with my assistance he managed to get backed in and dumped the first load. Wow a dump truck holds a lot of dirt, the pile was as tall as me. 4 more loads came and after the last one I wrote out a hefty check of over 750 bucks! 750 bucks for dirt, ouch. Plus I have to pay another guy to spread it. The dirt back by the shed is there to raise up the entrance to the shed. During wet season that strip can be totally submerged and hopefully this dirt will be enough to get it up above the waterline. The rest of the dirt went to the side of the house where it is also low. We staked out a rectangle where we want it spread. This area is going to be fenced in and used as a dog run for Nicki. The huge piles of dirt served as a giant playground for the dog all weekend. She had a blast climbing the dirt mountains and digging into them.

The weekend was a series of small chores/jobs that managed to fill up the time rather completely. We pulled off the solar cover on the pool for the first time in a month to clean the accumulated dirt and junk off it. The pool water is still in the upper 70’s but Ali proclaims that is far too cold for her to venture in. Our neighbors have been trying to clear out their huge collection of stuff. They are packrats extrordinaire. They asked if I could use any of the stuff. They had a bunch of cool tools. So I wound up with an air compressor, a post hole digger, and tiller machine, an electric weed whacker, an electric chain saw and a garden claw! Awesome stuff.

The Eagles scored a nice win. It was close for almost 3 quarters but the Birds turned it on in the end and made it look like more of a blowout than it really was.

If you have a cool picture, why not make it into a huge rasterized picture? This is REALLY cool.

That fight at the end of the Pistons/Pacers game was insane. Of course the fans are assholes for throwing stuff on the player but damn, how can a player be so stupid to go into the stands and throw punches? It was one of the most amazing things I ever saw at a sporting event. As bad as it was, I was sort of surprised the NBA suspended Artest for the entire year! I mean I think it is good they did to send a message that you just can’t do that, I just am surprised they did it.

Todays CEBIM quote, under maintenance:

3. Please in charge the scooter as soon as you will holding it for long time. It can extend the life of the battery.

Under the maintenance section:

Don’t put in the sunshine, and don’t thought the old battery in the fire. Don’t upend.

Yesterday Ali did her first real world test on the e-bike as she took it on a 1.6 mile commute from her work to the gym. Everything went fine although last night I had to do some more repairs/adjustments.

I finished up the second bathroom last night. Ali sealed the grout on Wednesday and last night I cut off the bolts holding down the toilet, grouted around the toilet and put all the stuff back into the bathroom. I’ll post the finished pic sooner or later.

I am sending out more prospecting letters, hoping to hook myself a good deal to buy one more piece of land as an investment. So far, I’ve gotten 2 calls back. One wasn’t interested in selling, the other wanted twice what I was going to offer. I made myself a sweet little online database to track my prospects and the associated information. I’m also trying to find out how you can buy properties that are in the probate process.

Life can be a pain in the ass, my brain hurts.

Here is todays blurb from the e-bike instruction manual under the trouble shooting section:

4. Very low speed and engine less power

A. No more battery, — In charge prompt
B. Less air pressure of trye, –Fill it
C. Too tight brake, –Adjust it
D. Bearing damaged. –Change new
E. Battery damaged. –Change new
F. Bad connection of main lines for electrical. –Reconnect after clear body

As you can see, with these thorough, crystal clear directions it is lightning quick and easy to trouble shoot your e-bike.

Speaking of the e-bike, I spent most of last night fixing more things on it. I found a sturdy way to attach the front basket, tightened up bolts in a half dozen different spots that were loose, fixed the steering column so it didn’t wobble like it was going to fall off and found a way to mount the bike on a conventional bike rack. I think it is just about ready for real world use. Ali was out on it awhile last night trying it out some more and is pretty comfortable on it. At full throttle it zips along at somewhere between 15-20 mph so it is certainly much faster than foot travel. I just hope it holds up.

The new gym is FINALLY open. After a month of no gym visits, my longest streak in 10 years I finally got to go back. It’s big, clean and has more machines than I can figure out what to do with. It’s great. I look forward to hitting it hard. I lost a lot of strength in that 4 week period.

Here is another CEBIM (Cheesey E Bike Instruction Manual) Quote.

Under features of the E-Bike:

3. Battery: Big capability, pallution protect. Long live.