Archives June 2006

We have decided to pull out for PA today.  Ali’s grandfather’s health has not been good recently so she wants to get up there as soon as possible to see him.  Last night we got most of the stuff together.  Even though the party van is massive, most of the space is used up for passengers, not cargo or luggage.  Plus we are going to have the rear seat down in bed form, further cutting down on space.  I will have to pile up some of the junk in front of one of the rear seats.  For entertainment I packed some magazines, dvd’s and my gameboy rig.  I am not sure how far we will get today.  Ideally one of us can nap while the other drives to allow us to go almost non-stop.  Worst case we can park somewhere and sleep.  I am expecting the 1203 miles to take between 19 and 22 hours to cover.

I am not taking our laptop and no I’m not bringing my Warcraft cd’s to install on my dad’s pc.  I will basically be unplugged for 7 or 8 days.  I don’t really think it will be all that hard.  Plus my characters will generate rested xp during that time anyway. 🙂

I’m sure there will be a million things along the way of the next 7 or 8 days that will be bloggable. I’m also sure that by the time I get a chance to blog again I will have forgotten half of them. 

I hope the Heat win the series.  I want them to win for both Shaq and Pat Riley.  Neither one of them have been able to win the big game after they left the Lakers.

I’m pulling for Tunisia in the World Cup…

We are pulling out for PA either tomorrow evening or early Wednesday morning.  It seems weird to have it so close.  This weekend I cleaned up the party van, checked the oil, put air in the tires all in the hope that it gets us to and back from our destination without incident.

It was a very, very hot weekend.  On Sunday we did a complete mowing of the grass since we will be gone for 7 or 8 days.  I was out with the weedwhacker for a solid two hours.  Then after that I had the stupid idea to work on cleaning up the cabbage palms.  Cleaning the cabbage palms involves pruning the low and/or dead fronds, pulling out dead seed branches, pulling out vines that grow into them and cutting off these annoying fern things that like to grow out of the crevices.  Our palm trees have grown quite a bit over the years and now require a ladder for me to get to some of the branches and even with the ladder there are certain areas I can’t reach.  After cleaning the trees in the back of the property I had had enough.  I was hungry, thirsty, tired and covered in a a combination grass, sweat and tree dirt film.  Luckily I finally have the pool clean enough that it was suitable for swimming which helped get our body temperatures down.

Sunday afternoon Ali said she was tired and wanted to take a nap.  She asked me if I wanted to nap.  I said no, I never nap.  It feels like a waste of time.  However after initially saying no, I came back and laid down with Ali, saying I would lay down for a couple minutes.  3 hours later I woke up.  I guess I needed it.  So I had napped through the time period I planned to finish up the housework, so I had to knock that out, fun. 

Saturday night Ali and I went to a movie and dinner.  We saw the X-men movie, it was sweet.  It had great action, great effects and surprises in the plot that I didn’t expect.  At the end there is a split second shot that makes you think another sequel is possible however I don’t know how they will pull it off because of what happened during the flick.  It gets a B+.  After the movie we went to my favorite place, Carrabba’s to eat.  We had another great meal, with a great waitress in a great atmosphere.  I love that place.

I have the full scale facial hair thing going on.  This is part of my Rumble prep (see tip #2).  By the time next Saturday hits I should be a hairy looking freak.  You can see a bit of it on the cam.

Next week at this time will have had made the 1200 mile drive to PA.  This upcoming weekend we have a bunch of prep to do.  We haven’t decided firmly if we are going to leave Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.  It should be an interesting trip.  I am bringing dvd’s to watch in the party van along the way.  Our plan is to have Ali and I drive in shifts with the the non-driver napping along the way. 

I finally cancelled my hosting account with the old provider.  At first I was nervous about the move but now I am happy.  The new host has more features and allows me tons of flexibility.  There are a few annoying things but nothing I can’t work around.  I am just about to click 16,000 blog hits, sweet.

We spend so much money on pet related stuff, especially Nicki. I estimate that we probably spend at least 200 per month on things for her. Ali gets her this canned food that is basically safe for human consumption.  She buys it at this high end dog care place in Naples.  It costs almost 2 bucks a can.  Awhile back I found the same food at the local Pet Supermarket chain and it was 25% less.  However Ali still overpays for the stuff at the dog place.  I’ve come to accept this price gouging over time as something not worth fighting about.  However last night I was unloading the latest load of food Ali got and I saw a small bag of dog treats, 18 BUCKS!  Ali just got done running 5 and a half miles so I didn’t want to jump her about it so I waited a bit then mentioned something.  I said it was crazy to pay 18 dollars for a bag of dog treats when Nicki likes the treats that cost 2.99 just as much if not more.  I suggested that if Ali wanted to spend that much on something like that that she uses “her” money instead of “our” money.  Ali didn’t verbally respond beyond saying the 18 dollar treats are healthier for Nicki.  Come on, the dog eats better than we do. 

There is just so much spending that goes on in our household, some needed, much not.  Luckily our incomes allow us to do so without digging a credit card hole.  However our savings only creeps up at a very slow rate and is soon to be cut considerably by the pool cage bill.  We just need to take pause before buying certain things and consider our real need for them.  Normally when Ali and I have a mini-argument over money it’s because Ali doesn’t care to question why some things cost what they do, she just knows that we can afford to pay for it.   She talks about wanting to start IRA’s, buying a new Prius, the days of her being able to drop back to either staying home or working very little but we are paying 18 bucks for a bag of dog treats.  If we want to be able to make some of those things happen we will have to examine our cash flow, me included.  I certainly could clean up my spending as well.  If we moved into a condo we could save a fortune.  House maintenance related items are the largest bite out of the financial pie.  The addition of the party van has not helped matters.  The $3500 van has mutated into an almost $6000 van in the 6 months we’ve had it. 

I think part of the reason we spend with small thoughts of consequence is we know we are sitting on a big equity egg with our house and 2 pieces of land we own.  I think knowing that safety net is present contributes to the situation.

Well this past weekend I upgraded 3 servers at work from Windows 2000 Server to Windows Server 2003 R2.  After the upgrade I did some quick testing and all of the applications came up and apparently worked.  Well it turned out that one component of one of our major applications broke.  I spent a day and a half trying to resolve the problem but yesterday we decided to revert back.  There is no uninstall for Windows 2003.  I tried restoring my Windows 2000 backup on top of Windows 2003.  When I rebooted it hung immediately saying it was missing files. Great….  So I installed Windows 2000 to another directory and then did another tape restore.  The system booted this time but after entering my login credentials I was presented with a blank desktop.  After some searching on various knowledge bases I found a way to bring up the system properties and rejoin the domain, however I still had a blank desktop on reboot.  So I did one more restore, just restoring the Windows directory, the Documents and Setting directory and the registry. That did the trick.  After 6 hours of installs, endless reboots and watching tape restore progress bars, the day was saved.  This server will be staying Windows 2000 until it is retired. I didn’t get home last night until 8:45.

Youtube.com is an addictive site.  You could spend 24 hours a day pouring through the content.  My videos have been up there for a month or so.  So far the most popular video is this one of the battery releasing from my rc plane in flight. It has been viewed 1,048 times so far.  The least popular is the paranoid video I made of Keener with only 8 views. I guess it isn’t funny unless you know him.

We had another nice downpour last night, I think it was from the outer bands of Alberto, we got over 1.25 inches of rain.  I really dig having my outdoor weather station in operation.

My return to Powerhouse Gym hasn’t been all that bad.  Yea it’s dark, it’s warm, it isn’t clean and it’s unorganized but I knew that coming back.  I bring my own water and go to the bathroom at work before heading there so that makes it bearable.  It’s a shame, if the owner spent half an hour a day cleaning it up and maybe a couple grand in some basic repairs it would be 100% better.  He runs that gym on a shoestring budget yet he drives a new H2 Hummer….

In my electric bill this month I saw a pamphlet for this thing. It is a modification that fits under your electric meter that allows you to plug your generator right into your homes electrical system.  Then you control electricity throughout the house by just flipping breakers on and off.  It is a GREAT thing.  If money wan’t so tight right now I would drop the 650 for it in a snap.  No more running extension cords everywhere and things like hot water, well pump, lights, the microwave all become realities through careful manipulation of the breaker box.  We will get it sometime before hurricane season is over hopefully. It can’t hurt home resale either.

Last night Ali picked up yet another stray dog at our house.  This one was a cute female beagle that we had seen wandering the neighborhood for 3 or 4 days.  It had a collar but no tags whatsoever.  I’m pretty sure it was from a mexican family.  So as Ali came to pick me up from work she took the beagle to domestic animals so it could either be reclaimed by it’s owners or adopted back out.  I think it will be better served by the latter.  Ali asked if I wanted to see the dog before she dropped it off and I declined, knowing that Ali was subtley working the “maybe we have room for two dogs” angle.  Of course if I saw it, I would feel pity for it and get attached making it painful to drop her off.  I went through that once and it sucked.  Ali took some pics of the dog which I will try to post at some time.  There are so many loose dogs in our area, it’s a shame people don’t care enough to make sure they are restrained or at least tagged so they can be returned if found. 

Tropical storm Alberto has been dumping a couple inches of rain on us over the past 2 days.  It’s nice to see that the hurricane season wasted no time in hitting us.  I hope it isn’t another year like last, it could be brutal.

The weekend was pretty busy.  Friday night I was up till 1am trying to do some remote work on the servers at work and then went into the office for half a day on Saturday.  After that I went home and was outside for 4 hours or so doing various chores I thought up while I was working on the servers Friday night. 

I got some heavy duty pool shock stuff that I applied on Saturday.  It worked great, the pool is nice and clear now.  How long it stays that way with the daily dumping of debris into it is questionable.  Speaking of the pool, Friday morning I scooped the little snake out once again.  Then on Saturday he was in there again.  Finally I had enough.  I didn’t want to see the snake wind up dead in the pool skimmer because once he gets in he was too small to get out.  So I scooped him up with the handheld pool skimmer and carried him 1000 feet or so all the way to the main canal that is behind our property.  I sort of felt sad as I placed him in the water by the bank of the canal.  He slid into a crevice and I walked back, hoping he would move on to a non-pool home.

In other pool related news, I once again called the pool contractor.  The last time I talked to him he told me work could begin on my cage as early as late last week.  No work has been done.  So I called today.  I got more talk of delays and more stories about the inability to get experienced help.  I told him we were getting very frustrated with all the delays.  He apologized but he said he was doing the best he could with the resources he has.  If the guy hadn’t been sitting on a nearly 5k check of ours since January I probably would have dumped him by now.  I told him how we would be gone for a week starting the 21st.  He couldn’t guarantee they would be done by then.  I don’t want work going on when we aren’t there.  He told me that it definitely would be started the Monday after we get back.  I’m holding him to that deadline, firmly.

Ali stopped at the library on Saturday and picked up 3 dvd’s.  I had no desire to see any of them, Wag the Dog, Catch me if you Can, and Being Gilbert Grape.  I asked her later what made her pick these movies and she said it was just because we hadn’t seen them before.  Well I was trying to be the good husband and offered to watch whichever one she wanted Saturday night.  Ali complains that 99% of the movies we see, I pick and they are normally all action/sci-fi stuff.  Ironically she did not want to pick which of the 3 we watched either so I picked Wag the Dog.  I saw it had Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman in it so it should be ok. What a borefest.  It was a take off on the Clinton / Monica Lewinsky scandal.  I think during the 90 minutes I smiled once and dozed off at least 10 times.  This is why I pick the movies. 🙂

Sunday morning I saw that the rain from Alberto was starting to get close so I got Ali up to hit the track to get her run in before we got wet.  We even had time after the run to do a high speed grass cutting buzz.  Then the rain started and continued for most of the day.  If you look at my weather magnet you’ll see we’ve had about a half inch of rain the past 24 hours.

The people that bought the house to the left of ours (but still live in Michigan) had been down since last Wednesday but I hadn’t done much more than a quick HI and quick yelling conversations from across the property line.  I felt a bit bad about it but all week we were getting home late and then Saturday Ali and I both worked.  I just didn’t have the energy to go over there and socialize.  Well Sunday I finally walked over there and talked to them a bit.  The guy asked me if I could help him move a heavy computer desk that was left by our old neighbors.  As we moved parts of it away from the wall it revealed a tiny snake just like the one that has been living in my pool.  It was still alive.  The appearance of a live snake freaked them both out.  At first I was trying to grab him with my bare hands.  The snake coiled and was trying to bite me with his tiny mouth.  Even though I know he couldn’t hurt really hurt me,  I was hesitant to let him try.  My neighbor had a pair of work gloves which I put on.  I pinned the snake between my hands and carried him over to the trench on our property.  I have a feeling if the snake was discovered without me present he would have been killed in short order.  The computer desk was big and heavy.  As we lifted the top part off we had to set it down to readjust the grip.  The way I was positioned I had no easy way to set it down.  It wound up sliding down the front of my shin, scraping off a nice thick layer of skin.  It started oozing blood but I reassured them that I would be ok and we should just get the stuff moved. We pushed, pulled, slid, lifted and grunted the pieces over into the other room.  It was tough.  I made some small talk for a little while and then excused myself to go attend to my wound.  I told them we would see them before they leave Tuesday evening.  I’m not sure if we will or not.  Until they actually move here they are kind of just the people that own the house that live in Michigan.

Ali helped bandage my wound like the good caretaker that she is.  We finsihed up the chores I had left and then we sat down to watch a good movie, Lord of the Rings, Return of the King.  I had gotten it for xmas but it was never opened. It was 3 hours and 10 minutes of great cinema.  Watching it reminded me of how closely World of Warcraft is tied to LOTR.  In the game there are many similarities.  It has 6 races you can choose to be including humans, night elves, orcs, dwarfs, gnomes (hobbits) and undead, all races from LOTR.  The time period is the same and the overall feel of the game makes you think the creators of the game are huge LOTR fans.

Well I have been off creatine for more than 5 weeks and still have managed to maintain a decent strength level.  I one-repped 265 today at the gym over lunch.  If I used a spotter I may have been able to squeeze out 270.  I just hate using spotters though because if they even touch the bar it negates the validity of the lift in my mind.  Only Ali (and Rich) know the drill, even if it looks like my head is going to pop off, even if one arm is lagging behind the other, don’t touch the weights unless I ask for help, otherwise I have matters under control…

My web site migration is almost complete.  It’s been going pretty well.  I really have the flexibility to do all sorts of hosting now with unlimited drive space and 500 gb of transfer bandwidth.  I have contacted support several times and have gotten replies back very quickly. 

The party van has been quite the pain in the ass.  After laying out 1600 bucks for repair of the AC, steering box and all 4 brakes on Wednesday, as I drove it back to work I noticed that the air just didn’t feel all that cold.  Granted it was in the lower 90’s but still it just wasn’t right.  I called back the garage and they told me to bring it back and they would look at it.  Yesterday they worked on the AC some more and called me late in the day saying it was ready.  So I got dropped off and drove off.  The AC felt colder, great, but then I noticed that the steering felt squirrely.  It felt like it wanted to veer around almost like a wheel was loose.  I immediately turned it around and told the owner about what I felt.  I felt bad because it was after 5 (they close then) but the owner was happy to help me.  He drove it and could feel it a little bit.  The van has 3 tires of one make and one of another.  The mismatched tires were on the back but when they put the van back together they put the mismatched tires in the front.  So they jacked it up in the driveway and did a Nascar style tire swap.  I drove it around and still felt some of the same problem but it was a bit better.  The owner double and triple checked everthing, explaining to me exactly what was done.  Eventually I told him I would drive it and see how it goes.  I apologized for keeping them late but he said it was no problem, it’s his job.  It’s rare to find such an attitude in Naples.  I’ll stick with this guy for sure.  The drive back to work was ok, I can deal with the steering and the air was decently cold.  The party van has been a major league money sink, if it doesn’t calm down with vacuuming cash from my wallet it may wind up finding itself in another driveway.     

My knees have been very weird recently.  Wednesday morning every step I took sent sharp shooting pain up my leg and I was limping badly.  Then at the gym during lunch I did a mild leg workout doing leg extensions, leg curls and calf raises.  Sometime during the afternoon the pain subsided and all day yesterday I didn’t feel a thing.  There must be something loose floating around in there and if it lodges in the wrong spot it’s pain city.  Hopefully it either dissolves or finds a new home.

 The snake has reappeared in our pool a couple more times.  Most recently I pulled him out at 6am this morning.  It’s crazy, he just loves our pool.

The weekend was supposed to be a vball tourney weekend but I scrapped it in order to let my knee have a chance to be in decent shape for the Pottstown Rumble in a couple weeks.  So instead I am coming into work tomorrow to upgrade some servers and then will be doing general housework crap the rest of the weekend, nothing exciting.

Before taking the party van up north I wanted to get some issues taken care of,  namely the brakes and the AC.  The brakes shook the van violently when they were stepped on hard and pulled strongly to the right.  The AC which was converted over to R-134 coolant last month still was not cooling well.  Well yesterday I got the call back from the garage with the diagnosis.  The brakes all the way around were a mess and two components of the AC were leaking and needed to be replaced.  Plus he said the reason the pull to the right was so hard was there is an inch of play in the steering box and it should be replaced as well.  The estimate for all this work, $1500…..  My sticker shock was impossible to mask but the guy went through the break down and he was using aftermarket parts as opposed to motorcraft stuff which would have jacked the price much higher.  I bit hard and told him to do it.  We are locked in with taking it to PA and it needs to be safe to get us there.  The joy of used vehicle ownership. Great timing too, the 17k pool cage bill will be hitting soon.

I have been steadily been moving stuff across to the new provider.  I originally had ideas of trying to move the message boards across intact.  However when I went to go look at the old boards I saw they all had been hijacked and the home pages were replaced with a message from the offending group. So I just said f it and I am starting fresh with the message boards on the new site. It’s just easier.  There are so many things to move across…

Well I am up and running in my new space.  I am still moving stuff across, it is a long process.  The home page comes up, the blog works, email is live and I even got my web cam page back up.  However the image quality on the web cam page is not as good as before.  The old webcam I had would lock up my new MP system at work so I picked up a cheap logitech unit.  Cheap = inferior image quality.  Oh well, at least you can see what is going on.