Archives September 2006

When I took Nicki out this morning I felt the first hint of coolness in the air.  Normally temperatures here overnight never leave the 70’s during the prolonged summer season.  Well this morning the thermometer in the truck read 66.  It really felt good. 

I also totally missed the passing of the seasons last weekend.  I didn’t realize it was now fall.  Up north I always knew when fall hit.  I focused on the date as the beginning of the downfall that inevitably resulted in miserable winter weather.  I hated anticpating the bad weather.  I realized that in many ways my lamenting the onset of winter very much paralleled my fear and hangups about getting old.  The only difference is I was able to do something about the winter problem. I look forward to the winter weather here, it is awesome.

One of the contestants on Dancing with the Stars this season is Harry Hamlin, husband of Lisa Rinna (who was on the show last season and was great) He got kicked off this week.  My only exposure to Harry had been on LA Law, a show I watched religiously.  I always had the impression he was really a cool dude from the character he played.  Well his Dancing with the Stars run totally changed my opinion.  He now is just an old, dorky guy.  He totally seemed uncomfortable when speaking on camera.  His dancing improved somewhat over the 3 weeks but his persona never did.  Maybe he is just shy.  Well anyway, I would have preferred he would have stayed off the show so my LA Law facade would have remained intact.

Am I crazy for really looking forward to the new Rocky movie coming out at Christmas time?  How could I possibly be interested in seeing a 60 year old Stallone playing Rocky again?  How ridiculous is the plot that a fighter his age could possibly get back into the ring? Eh, who cares, I can not wait to see it!  I love Rocky…..  Stallone has gotten back into great shape for the role. 

I’m glad they woke up after Rocky V and realized that a Rocky movie HAS to focus on Rocky fighting.  Rocky V was the worst one by far because they focused on Rocky being a manager instead of a fighter.  It just didn’t work.  They made us wait until the very end to see him throw hands and it was lame exchange at that.

The weekend should be ok.  I have been looking more seriously into the Camry Hybrid.  I ran some numbers and we may be able to swing one sooner rather than later.  We’ll see.

I have had a long running dislike of Sprint which started when I moved to Florida.  They have screwed me over with local telephone issues more times than I can count.  They made me so mad that I registered the sprintblows.com domain name that I had up and active until recently.  Well within the past few months, Sprint divested itself of local telephone servie in our area and the chopped off arm was now known as Embarq.  It is basically the same people under a new name.  Well today I verified that they still suck.

We got a call late yesterday from our one branch that their line to us was down.  I looked at the router and verified it was down and had someone else in our department call  it in.  When I look at my work email the next morning I see a message saying the circuit was intentionally disconnected upon order of some Embarq engineer! WTF???  My boss is mad as hell when she hears this and calls them up to see what is going on.  The answer she got was unbelievable. It basically went like this “… we received a disconnect order on this circuit 3 YEARS ago from Joe Shmoe (a name noone knows) and we just got around to doing it. We were doing some “cleanup”  Oh my God.  I mean how can they even ADMIT to this?  They were just getting around to a disconnect order placed 3 years ago of our circuit by some person not affiliated with our office?  What a bunch of f’in morons.  Luckily the process got reversed quickly and the branch was back up by mid-morning.  Man I should have kept that site up, I wonder if EmbarqBlows.com is available?

Last night I finally got to see the interview Bill Clinton did with Chris Wallace of Fox Sunday News.  I saw brief clips of him getting in Chris’s face about how he handled Osama Bin Laden and terrorism in general during his term.  Watching the full interview really made me miss the days when we had an exetremly intelligent individual running our country.  It was amazing as he rattled off facts, names and numbers off the cuff throughout the interview.  He spoke with such confidence and assurance that it instantly commanded respect.  It was great seeing him call out Fox News for what it is, a mouthpiece for the Bush administration and it’s agenda.  Damn I wish there were no term limits.  And to imagine our biggest problem with him was getting some oral….. 

Last night I watched the first episode of Heroes on NBC.  It is a new series about a bunch of people that discover they have some sort of super human power.  It was great!  I really enjoyed it.  The premise is very appealing to me.  I, like most other kids I imagine, always dreamed of having super powers.  I remember imagining I had many powers such as flight, wrists that shot out webs, and super strength.  I remember drawing up and wearing my own super hero costumes and trying to engineer my own web shooters.  However the power I recall imagining I had the most often were eyes that were combination laser beam and tractor beam.  I had the ability to cut something out of the ground with my eyes and then lift it and put it anywhere I wanted.  Many, many times I imagined I cut Veterans Stadium out of the parking lot and flew it onto our property in Gouglersville.  Well anyway, if you like that sort of stuff, you will like Heroes.

The party van has been in the auto trader for 5 weeks + so far.  I have gotten zero calls.  The only action I received was an email off the site where someone asked me if I would be interested in doing a trade for a Harley, where I would give him the van AND cash in exchange. 🙂  A week or so ago I put a FOR SALE sign in the window of it that faces the road but still have had no action.  It’s a bit of a downer.

For the first time since around early May I ran a mile.  I ran it on the treadmill at the gym after work.  It didn’t go too badly.  Early on I could feel my body asking me what I was doing, it wasn’t used to the motion anymore.  I’d say about halfway in things felt better.  I ran it at a 6mph pace (10 minute mile) so I was far from setting the world on fire but it was fast enough.  Last night I could feel some minor tenderness in my right knee so as a precaution I popped an Aleve and iced it.  My left knee felt totally fine.

  Today, again I can feel it a bit in the right knee but nothing bad at all.  I am not going to push it, I will try to run once a week, increasing my distance a little bit each time as long as I am able to do so without feeling any major pain.  The advantage to running on a treadmill is if you feel a tweak you can instantly stop.  When you are out there hoofing it on the road you are more apt to try to push through it since you have to get back to where you started from.

  It felt good to run for the first time in 4 or 5 months.  For a first effort I think it went well.  My new routine has been to do weights over lunch and then do cardio after work while Ali hits the other gym.  It should help me carve off a few pounds to assist me in reintroducing impact to my activities. I will be very strict in listening to what my body tells me.  I just can’t ignore things and figure they will fix themselves anymore.

Pretty much everything went as planned this weekend.  Friday night I watched the tivo’d Dancing with the Stars shows.  The show is ok but I watch it primarily because Ali likes it.  Between the main show and result show it was 3 hours of ballroom dancing.  It was a bit much for me, by the end of the three hours I was totally tired of it.

   Saturday morning while Ali mowed on the tractor, I weeded.  I weeded and weeded and weeded some more.  I bet I was at it for close to an hour and a half.  I really hate weeding.  Even though I religiously do it every 2 weeks it doesn’t seem to reduce the amount of weeds over time. Since the ground is so wet, the mulch, which is supposed to block weeds, instead becomes a soggy spawning ground for more weeds to grow out of.

After all the outside work was done we spent about 4 hours cleaning up the office.  We moved a couple shelves around and did a lot of sorting and throwing out.  I now have huge piles of books and other stuff to list on half.com and ebay sitting by my desk.  You can see pictures of it all below. 

After busting ass for most of the day I thought Ali would enjoy going out to dinner.  Spur of the moment we also called my mom and invited her along.  Mom had mentioned a little while back how she hasn’t been to the Snook Inn since she moved to Florida so we went there.  It is located in Marco Island, right on the water.  It’s a great place and normally a location where we take most of our visitors.  It has a big outdoor seating area, live music, a thatched roof over the bar and just has a great, unique atmosphere. 

I figured on a Saturday night it would be quite full, even off season.  I was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a few spaces in the parking lot.  We didn’t have to wait at all to be seated.  We sat at a table in between the bar and the mini-stage.  It seemed like a good spot initially but it turned out to be not so great.  The music speakers were only several feet from us and as a result carrying on conversation was quite difficult, it was very hard to hear what each other was saying even across the table.  Even so we had a good time, the views were pretty, the food was good and we didn’t have to wait.

Sunday morning Ali had to crawl out of bed at 5am to help work a 20k race.  I stayed home but got out of bed myself before 6.  Later that morning I did the oil change on the Tacoma.  It went smoothly more or less.  I had a bit of oil that spilled but I think the next time I should be able to prevent most of that.  I also drained the radiator and added new coolant.  Even with the coolant work I finished up in a little more than a half an hour.  I kind of enjoyed it actually.

By the time Ali got back I had most of the remaining housework finished up.  We flipped on Fox pre-game to get ready for the Eagles 4:15 game.  During one of the commercials I changed over to CBS to see James Brown in action with his new network.  Hearing his voice really made me miss him on the Fox broadcast, it really did.  The Eagles game followed a similar script to last week, they steamrolled in the first half and then had a prolonged shaky period in the second half before they finally, (unlike last week) sealed the game.  They really need to figure out how to play a full 60 minutes of solid football.  Their secondary injuries are catching up to them, it seems like they just break down if a team forces them to make a play.  The 98 yard fumble return, Westbrook’s 70+ yard TD run and the opening play flea flicker were my favorite moments.  That Westbrook run really showed some heart and desire. Anyway, they snagged a needed win and play next Monday night at home against the Packers, they are the better team and need to win that game.

Isn’t it ironic that as we approach the November elections that gas prices have magically started to come down?   Hmmm I’m sure the two events are not related right?  There is no reason to think that W’s administration is not calling in favors to their buddies to cut into their multi-billion dollar profit margins for a couple months to help the pubby’s in their re-election efforts?  It’s all so corrupt and dirty.

I had a bad morning.  I had a dream that somehow involved me taking a racehorse style piss.  Well you can guess where this goes.  Yea I wet my pants.  I was laying on my back and I came to quick enough before things got out of control. I’m sure when Ali wakes up this morning she will be wondering why there is a load of laundry in the washing machine.  I can’t tell you the last time that happened.  I think I vaguely recall it happening since I became an “adult” but it’s been ages.  Happy Friday.

In a continuing effort to reduce expenses where possible, before my orthodontist appointment yesterday, I stopped at the auto store and got the stuff to change the oil in our vehicles.  When I was younger I always changed my own oil.  Then as I got into my mid to late 20’s it became convenient to pay a few dollars more to pay a quick lube place to do it.  However since I have moved down here I have had bad experience after bad experience at these lube places.  So for the cost of one Quick lube I can do both vehicles myself.  At least I know it will be done right.  The only pain in the ass part is having to drop off the used oil to recycle but I will deal with the inconvenience. It’s good to get dirty under a car once in awhile anyway, makes you feel like a MAN!

This weekend is our cleaning project weekend.  The project for this month is the office.  The office is filled with so much stuff.  It is going to be a big job but it’s long overdue.  

This week is bad fashion week at the gym apparently.  Today I witnessed another first, some guy wearing his Oakley mirrorized sunglasses/mp3 player the entire workout.  Yep, this guy has those dumb combo mp3 player- glasses deal that Oakley makes.  Nothing says you are willing to overpay for stupid gadgets like these do. ($300)  The glasses also flipped up in the front like the clip ons that 80 year olds wear.  He wore these proudly as he went around the gym.  I noticed that I was not alone in spotting this odd spectacle.  He obviously thought he looked damn cool.  he spent as much time inspecting himself in the mirror as he did pushing weight. Funny. 

Finally after almost exactly 3 years, almost exactly double the amount of time I was told it would take, I am finished with my braces.  I have one nasty looking before pic of my teeth.  I don’t want to show the after shot until I get them zoom bleached.  They look pretty dingy right now, especially where the braces were mounted. You can tell from the before pic why I was never one who wanted to open his mouth with a toothy grin.  Looks like I have Billy Bob teeth.  Wait for the after shot. It is going to be weird to not have to go to the ortho office every month.

Randall dug out this pic he snapped of me and Ali after a volleyball tournament in Fort Lauderdale.  I think it was last year and he says it was after we won BB.  I don’t quite recall. Anyway it was when I was in my ultra-hairy state.  I was letting my hair get long.  What I found was when my hair was long the only time I liked it was when I had a hat or visor on, it looked cool spilling out of it.  I generally have the same feeling about long hair on women.  I think long hair on women looks the best when it is pulled up.  I also am sporting ample facial hair in the pic.  It’s as grungy as I get.

For those of you that read this for fitness tips (same people that read it for my reality tv reviews) I tried a new exercise yesterday that I saw a guy I talk to at the gym do before.  You grab a 12 pound medicine ball, the type that is flat and does not bounce.  You grab it with two hands and swing it over your head and slam it down to the ground on the side as hard as you can.  Then you pick it up immediately and reverse the movement and slam it to the other side.  It is sort of the movement you would make chopping wood.  Make sure you keep your core taut.  I did sets of 20.  It makes quite a racket as you slam the ball to the floor.  I wouldn’t have been able to do this at JFZ, far too noisy.  I guess workin out in a shithole has it’s advantages.  The move is also a great stress reliever.  Imagine the ball is whatever/whomever is annoying the piss out of you and enjoy slamming it to the floor again and again.

This morning as we were getting ready I heard a loud noise like something heavy had fallen against a wall.  It shook the house.  I went from room to room looking for something but found nothing.  The noise scared Nicki off the bed and Ali heard it in the shower.  It turns out what we heard was the sonic boom the space shuttle makes when it reenters that atmosphere over Florida. Wild stuff.

Yesterday we had a birthday lunch at work.  The food was from Olive Garden.  My entree was big enough that I didn’t need to eat the salad as well so I took the big plastic container with the salad in it and kept it in the fridge the rest of the day.  After work I took the salad and put it up front on the floor of the car.  I put the AC on bi-level and coooold to try to keep the salad as cool as possible.  The long ride home was quite cold but I put up with it in order to keep my Olive Garden salad fresh.  Finally we get home, I pull into the garage , open the door, and go to get out, totally forgetting about the salad.  My foot crashes into it, cracking the plastic and spilling almost half of the precious salad on the floor of the car.  I was not happy.  Well I wasn’t going to have it be a total loss so I pushed the salad that didn’t touch the floor back in the cracked container and then picked the big chunks off the floor with my hands and sucked up the little bits with the shop-vac.  The salad that we had left was good.

I bought a 2 gig SD card for my Treo off Ebay 3 weeks ago.  It just showed up yesterday.  The auction lister didn’t specify that delivery would take 3 weeks from SINGAPORE.  Well anyway, I slapped the card into the Treo and copied Napoleon Dynamite to it.  There is a freeware media player for various PDA platforms called TCPMP.  It is fantastic!  In the past if you wanted to play videos on your Palm you had to run it through an encoder that cut down the frame rate and pixels.  What you got out of it was barely viewable.  With TCPMP you can dump the same DIVX file you would watch on your pc onto your SD card and watch it on your portable device.  The sound and video for the movie was GREAT.  Who needs a portable DVD player for long trips.  Now I can just dump a couple movies onto my SD card and watch them on my Treo!

Last night I remote controlled my office cam from home.  Man it was cool.  There is something about remote controlling something from a distance that is just neat.  I had several of my buddies from up north in there screwing with it as well.  The picture quality with this camera is leaps and bounds above what I had in place before.  Look for yourself.

The cam image at work has been stalled for awhile, the camera I had at work was just lame with bad lighting and terrible picture quality.  I dropped some paypal bucks on an Orbit Cam which has much better picture quality as well as being ROBOTIC.  Yea it is one of those motorized cams.  I am going to be investigating setting it up so remote viewers can control the camera, I think it would be a geeky cool thing. Anyways you can check it out here.

**You can remote control it from the web, follow instructions on cam page to do so**