Archives November 2004

The Eagles romped all over the Cowboys last night which I was very happy about. However, being in a fantasy football league changes the way you look at games. The situation was this, I was 2 points ahead of my opponent. He had Terrell Owens and The Eagles D on his team, I had Jason Witten and Brian Westbrook. The outcome of these players was going to decide my FF game. When Owens jumped out to the quick TD’s I was happy for the Birds but I was assessing the point total against me at the same time. When the Eagles were in close and Levens scored the TD, I cursed the Eagles for not letting Westbrook run it in for the score. But even with the big performance by Owens, I matched it with a good performance by Witten and Westbrook. With less than 5 minutes to go in the game I was ahead by 2! Then the Birds intercept the ball, run it back 100 yards for a TD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The defensive TD gave my opponent the few points he needed to take me down. It was strange having the guy running the ball back and hoping he gets tackled. Of course if the game was close, FF wouldn’t matter as an Eagles win is of utmost importance over anything else. But with the blowout, I was hoping the Birds could do me a favor and just coast for a little longer. It’s ironic, the pass that was intercepted was intended for Witten. If he makes the TD grab I win. FF is a strange beast.

Last night we anxiously awaited the arrival of Ali’s E-bike. The E-bike is half scooter, half bicycle as you can pedal it or ride it like a moped. I got it off ebay for less than 200 dollars shipped to my door so I knew there were going to be some “issues”. The UPS guy got stuck covering 2 runs instead of one and didn’t show up until after 8. I anxiously greeted him and drug the 70 lb box inside to open it up. The box looked like it had a bumpy ride so we were a bit concerned before we even opened it. When we opened it we weren’t very pleased. The bike was thrown in the box with a few pieces of broken styrofoam and tools, parts and instructions were laying around everywhere. The wire basket that is for the front was bent to hell. The bike itself seemed to be intact although it had numerous scratches and nicks on the paint.

I pulled it out, unfolded it and opened up the instructions. I immediately start laughing as I read the directions to Ali. This is obviously made in Hong Kong or Taiwan. They didn’t make any effort in trying to make the English version of the instructions make any sense to someone who spoke English. This manual will be the source of many blog laughs to come. The first funny line I come to is:

1. Front handle: Install the plum screw of the flexible handles firstly, (lsoen) and make tight the screw of the plum lock, then turn tight the screw

There are no typos above, that is exactly how it is written

Let’s skip to step 3:

3. Whole body check; Turn on the switch of the power and switch key, check it if light. The rear brake if ok. The air pressure of trey is noaml. The screws of every parts is losen. After check everywhere is ok. Then can for road test.

As soon as I saw this manual I knew it was going to be an “interesting” assembly procedure.

I got the bike unfolded ok, and the handlebar installed. Next I went to the seat. The seat adjustment clamp was designed to be tightened with no tools, however it would not get tight enough to actually stop the seat from sliding down the tube. If you tried to apply too much torque, it would simply spin and get no tighter. After f’ing with it for awhile I decided to temporarily take the clamp off one of our bikes to lock it in place. That worked.

My next issue was trying to figure out how the kick stand worked. I pulled it down and managed to unseat a metal clip that kept in place. I had to use a screw driver to pry it back up into it’s original position. Then I figured out how it was supposed to work. Then we tried to figure out if the electric part of the bike was functional. The manual was next to worthless for anything except for repeated laughs at the attempts at English. There were keys but when we turned them we got no lights, no action from the motor, nada. So we plugged in the cheesy looking charger that draws an ominous big blue spark everytime you plug it into the wall. Again we tried some of the switches and got no signs of life. Hmmmm.

Ok well let’s at least see how it functions as a bicycle. We wheel it outside in the dark and Ali hops on. She rides it to the bottom of the driveway and back. It is clumsy and slow but at least she is moving. She went to go back down to the road for another lap to show me how some of the indicator lights sorta glowed while she pedaled and all of a sudden the back tire locks. Hmmm, I tell her to back up and try again and to not squeeze the brakes. “I’m not touching the brakes” She tries to go forward again and again it locks. Ah shit, I do a closer inspection. The chain that runs from the electric motor to it’s sprocket has hopped off and is wedged between the sprockets and the spokes of the rear wheel. After some aggravated, cursing minutes trying to unwedge it with a screw driver, I got the chain back to where it belonged. I then tried to adjust the rear wheel back a bit to take out some of the slop on the chain. Ali did another bicycle mode test run and we took it back inside to throw it back on the cheesy charger.

When Ali went back to take her shower during halftime of the Eagles game I decide to start playing with it again. I discover that the key turns in another direction, and that direction turned on some lights!! I nervously twist the throttle and the rear wheel spins! Yahoo. I immediately notice that the sprocket on the rear wheel has a bit of a wobble to it, but it doesn’t seem to affect it’s functionality. I excitedly tell Ali to come out and look. She sees my triumph and I convince her to come outside with me again so we can do a powered road test. She is scared to try it first so I jump right on it and take off. I go down the driveway, into the road and down to the neighbor’s driveway, do a loop and come back. It is a bit clumsy but has decent power and was easy to operate. Seeing my test run gave Ali the courage to try it. She did the same run at a slightly lower speed with little trouble and returned safely. Well it works.

Tonight we will do more practice runs. I am very skeptical about the long term reliability of this obviously cheap product but if it holds up for a little while it will be a bargain. We intend to throw it on the back of the car for Ali to use to take to and from the gym during the day so we don’t have to spend an extra hour at the end of the day for her to work out. It should be an interesting experiment. Pictures of the cheesy e-bike will be forthcoming.

I had a long 4 day weekend and used about half of it tiling the small bathroom. I have been avoiding it because it was such a pain in the ass doing the foyer, kitchen and utility room. The bathrooms are a bit less daunting because we decided it would be ok to go over the exisiting vinyl instead of going through the hassle of stripping it. I came to this decision after talking to the contractor we got a quote from to do the work. He said it would be fine to do so as long as the existing vinyl is well adhered, which it is. So the only prep I had to do was sand the floor down a bit and sweep it. The task was a bit more involved because I was doing it solo, however the prior experience of tiling helped greatly. I was able to get the tile laid down, cut and set in thinset in about 7 or 8 hours. Then on Friday I grouted it in a couple hours during the afternoon.

One of the aspects of doing a bathroom that worried me was the toilet. I originally was considering leaving the toilet in place and tiling around it, versus pulling it up and tiling under it. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that if I pulled the toilet and installed it on top of tile, which was higher than the vinyl, it wouldn’t fit right and I would have a leaking, stinky mess. Well after removing and replacing the bowl, I saw that those ideas were dumb and it sealed just fine on reinstallation. I did the entire job without many issues and I think the final product looks good. I just have to wet cure the grout yet tonight and then seal it anytime after that. The worst part of tiling is the knee trauma it inflicts on me. Crawling around for that long just makes my knees scream, even with knee pads. I hope to tackle the other bathroom during the extended Thanksgiving weekend.

So even though I was busting ass doing the tile project, I also spent a lot of time being a lazy ass at the same time. For example, on Friday, from about 8am till lunchtime, I did nothing but screw around on the Xbox. I took a couple hours to grout and then screwed around some more until Ali came home. It was weird, even though I did the tile work, I felt like a bit of a bum.

On Saturday morning we had to get up bright and early to take the Nissan up to Fort Myers to get my 30,000 mile service. When we bought the car, we had a problem because the dealership sold us a car that had 1500 miles on it and didn’t tell us. As compensation, I negotiated that they give me a free 30,000 mile maintenance. I’m glad we had it, otherwise the dealership would have charged me a RIDICULOUS 500 bucks to perform this work which seemed rather routine. I presented the service guy with my letter from thier sales manager, “US Marine” and he accepted it without question. I got a call during the morning asking if I wanted them to perform some additional ridiculously priced service while they were at it, which I respectfully declined.

During the afternoon we went to a lawn & garden show which was being held right down the road from us at the county fairgrounds. We picked up a fruit bearing banana tree as well as detailed instructions from the grower on how to be a successful banana farmer. I threw together a quick planting box for the banana tree and planted it. We also got a beautiful bougenvilia plant. Supposedly, within 16 months we should be harvesting bananas on a regular basis.

On Saturday night we had a date night. We went to dinner at Olive Garden and then went to see The Incredibles. It was an entertaining flick but it wasn’t a must see for me. The WOW factor for these computer animated films has worn off a bit for me. It’s still amazing what they can do but it takes more than that to entertain me at this point. The movie was good but it didn’t make me want to run out and tell everyone to see it. These type of films seem to be coming out monthly at this point. The Incredibles is doing huge box office numbers so my opinion must definitely be in the minority.

On Sunday morning I went into lazy ass mode again. I got a device for my gameboy that allows you to write game backups to flash memory. It’s awesome because it allows you to store 5 or 6 games on one cartridge and pick and play any of them at will. SO I spent a couple hours testing out various games. Eventually I started on what seemed to be my large task list. I cracked the whip and got most everything done by 1. Then I went back into lazy ass mode. The Eagles don’t play until tonight so I didn’t watch any NFL games and instead screwed off some more. I don’t know why I get stir crazy if I am not doing a sufficient amount of “productive” activities but by dinner time I was bouncing off the walls. I medicated myself by doing the bills and then doing a workout from Men’s Health. Ali can not understand my issue with having nothing to do, I can’t say I blame her.

The new gym is finally, finally supposed to open this week. It has been a frustrating month getting date after supposed date when they were going to open. It sounds like the county is being ridiculous with some permitting issues but still, the gym shouldn’t have kept throwing out dates to open without knowing for sure they were good. You always should under-promise and over deliver. To accomodate Ali getting to and from the gym on her own during the day, we have an E-bike coming today. More details to follow but it is basically a bike/scooter hybrid.

Add Fed Ex to the list. I was supposed to get a package to my house via Fed Ex ground on the 11th originally. Somehow during the transit, the date magically changed to today, the 12th and it didn’t show up today and instead the tracking says they attempted delivery but noone was home! I was home all f’in day, noone was here from Fed Ex. I called up and bitched and of course got nothing but “Sorry, it should be there Monday” Bastards.

With my cushy government job, we had off yesterday for Veteran’s Day. I celebrated by working on tiling the smaller bathroom. The project went well but it was slow going doing it all by myself. I only miscut a few tiles and I sort of tiled myself into a corner where I had no option but to stand on a couple tiles I just set in order to place the last two, but it looks like it will come out ok. Today I’ll grout it. I pulled the toilet to do the tiling and I am a bit nervous about how it will go back on when sitting on top of tile. I’m not sure if the bolts are long enough. I am using the small bathroom as a warmup for doing our bathroom in a little bit. I have a few pictures of the project I’ll post when it’s done.

Last night I watched Saving Private Ryan in it’s entirety. It amazes me that they can show it unedited with all the F-bombs and gore in the movie, but that is the way it really needs to be seen. I hadn’t seen it in it’s entirety since I saw it in theaters. It is a chilling, depressing and horrifying reminder of what war is all about. There are a couple scenes in it that haunt my mind and are difficult to forget. Even though there are various tragic, sad parts throughout the movie, I didn’t cry until the very end when the old Private Ryan is at the grave of Captain Miller. For whatever reason, that aspect of it just kills me. I remember when I saw it in the theater, looking away and trying to think of other things during that part to avoid crying in public. The movie made me think even more about how we have men and women going through the same sort of tragedies daily over in Iraq today. Their bravery is beyond any words of praise I could muster.

Congrats to Joe from the frigid forests of Maine, he is the big winner of the first big giveaway. He has won a box full of cd’s that will show up at his door absolutely free of charge! Stay tuned for the next big giveaway, you TOO could be a big winner just like Joe!

Over the weekend Alison and I were up in Lehigh Acres looking for more land as an investment. Lehigh Acres is in Lee county and is an area very similar to Golden Gate Estates, where we live. The big difference is the lots in Lehigh Acres are much smaller, typically 1/4 to 1/2 acre parcels. Their smaller size makes them much more affordable. We looked at a number of places, more than a half dozen. Some were literally in the middle of nowhere with access only by a one lane “road” consisting of little more than 2 tire tracks. But we found 2 that appealed to us. One was a for-sale-by-owner lot that was right off a major road and the other was another nice lot that was backed by an orange grove close to another major road. We put in offers on both of these lots, got counter offered and we accepted the counter. So we are well on our way to being real estate investors. The woman that was selling the lot privately offered me much advice about the entire process as she has been buying and selling land in Florida for a few years. I was suprised we could complete the entire sale process for a few hundred dollars and without stepping foot in a title company. It can all be handled by mail. The other lot was a realtor listing and was less money but still a good deal. The process of getting bank checks and having to overnight them here and there is a bit of a pain but by the end of the month I expect it to be all finished up. I have an itch to go buy some more but to invest much more would be too much of a financial hardship on us. My hope is to hold onto these lots a couple years and then have enough money to pay off the entire home equity line with money to spare, then repeat the process.

I don’t know why, but owning one of these is an appealing idea to me.

This is the most exciting development to hit the pages of my blog ever! Well not really, but still it’s more interesting than reading about me cleaning the house. I was cleaning up my desk over the weekend and was flipping through my CD collection. I noticed I have a bunch of CD’s of cracked games, ripped movies and other stuff of the sort sitting around. I have either played and/or watched them and no longer have any need for them. Instead of throwing them out. I thought I would try giving them away. This contest is beyond simple. So if you would like my collection, simply be the first to post a comment. You will get a box in the mail full of “stuff”. Good luck to all!

The Steelers put a big, glaring spotlight on what we already knew. The Eagles are far from perfect. The Steelers embarassed the Birds on both sides of the ball. I shut it off early fourth quarter and took a walk to burn off some steam. You can’t let people run the ball on you at will without repercussions. I’m not sure how they will fix their defensive problem. I just don’t know if they have the personel to do much about it. The TO / Donovan episode on the sidelines was rather uncomfortable to watch, I hope it isn’t the first seed of discontent. On the upside, if you are going to get man handled, embarrassed and destroyed by a team, I’d much rather it be during week 8 instead of the NFC championship game. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for the Birds. Nice game Steelers (who used to be my team as a youngster during the 70’s)

I have had multiple bad experiences with shipping recently. I mentioned a little while ago that UPS’s rates suck. Add slow and unreliable to the list. I also am not thrilled with USPS priority mail service. I used USPS priority mail to mail my brother’s laptop back up to him. Typically priority mail takes 2 days to get to PA from here. I mailed it on Saturday, my brother didn’t get the box till Thursday. I had the tracking service for it and it said it left Jersey City, NJ on Monday yet somehow it took an additional 3 days to go the remaing distance to PA. When I tried to get additional info from the post office they could tell me nothing except what I already found online. They said they don’t consider an item lost until it has been in transit for 14 days. Nice. I was relieved when my bro said it showed yesterday.

UPS is way overpriced. Even ground service costs a fortune and it is as slow as shit. I bought something on ebay that shipped last friday from the west coast, it isn’t scheduled to get to me until next Monday, 7 business days. The max coast to coast used to take was 5 days. So they raise the prices and decrease the service level. I have another shipment in progress that was sent 2nd day air. It was supposed to arrive yesterday. The tracking info shows it made it as far as Orlando and no further. My calls to UPS yesterday yielded no info, just canned responses that the system still shows an ontime delivery, even though there is no tracking beyond Orlando which is 3 hours north of us. Well it never came so I called first thing this morning and let them know that the tracking still hasn’t changed. The first guy I talked to sounded like was just awakened from a 10 year sleep. He said “We have until 5pm Nov 4th to deliver it…” I said today is November 5th. “Oh, mumble mumble, let me transfer you…” So now I have a tracking investigation going on. I fear someone got sticky fingers at UPS. DHL, here I come.

I have to work tonight and a good chunk of Saturday. The rest of the weekend will be spent watching football and driving around to check out potential investment properties. Nothing thrilling.

Read on and prepare to stagger through the next 4 years.