Archives 2006

Well I am one day post knee shot.  So far it seems like the result of the shot is I hear a lot less noise coming from the knee.  I don’t hear as many cracks and creaks coming from it as I usually do.

Last night after work I decided to hop on the mower.  We had 2 or 3 days without rain so the standing water had dried up, giving me a chance to knock down the high grass there.  I sprayed down thoroughly with OFF before venturing outside.  It’s a good thing. Apparently mosquitos like to hang on high grass and they weren’t very appreciative of me mowing down their home.  I was swarmed by them each time I did a swipe.  Even the OFF didn’t keep them all off me.  I was swatting like mad.

Big Brother All Stars is AWESOME this season.  Tuesday’s episode was great.  Dr Will gave a speech where he told the house he hated everybody and planned to throw every challenge for as long as he is there.  His strategy in the game is to do and say things that make it so obvious that he wants to go that people refuse to vote him out.  His plan is working.  He is crazy.  It’s hard to believe the guy is a doctor. 

I just left the knee doc.  I got the first of three shots in my right knee.  I was nervous about it but it wasn’t too bad.  First they spray the injection point with freezing spray, then they go in with a big needle of numbing stuff and then finally they inject the fluid.  The entire thing took all of a minute, maybe.  I had the sweats just because of the needle thing but the pain was minimal. 

We went over the MRI results.  There is a tear in the meniscus but it is below the surface, which is a good thing because it will probably heal.  It also showed thinning of the cartilage in the knee, just like my right one, a precursor to arthritis.  I am hoping I will be able to skate by without getting it scoped.  However the MRI confirms that the joint just is getting worn out and if I decide to continue to abuse it with impact activities I am going to accelerate the process.  Right now I am ok with concentrating on my gym work instead of running/volleyball.  Hopefully I can be ok with that.  I’m not very good at accepting not being able to do what I once did.

I have been leveling my mage and to help that process I brought my level 60 rogue out to Tanaris to help him complete some quests. Normally my characters spend most of the time between level 40 and 50 out in Tanaris. So I am going around doing my thing.  I see some horde players but don’t bother with them, not looking to start a fight, just minding my own business.  Well of course some asshole horde decides to jump me.  I die.  Tanaris is a big area and I was a long way from the graveyard so I had to walk forever to get my body back.  So now it was on.  Instead of spending the time completing quests with my mage now my sole mission is seeking revenge on my attacker.  I ride and ride, looking for him with no luck.  Along the way I spot several lower level horde players who unfortunately had to pay for the sins of the horde that attacked me, they all die by my hand.  I never did find the level 60 tauren hunter that killed me but spent about a half hour dropping his fellow horde players.  It’s easy to go off on these tangents in the game.

There is a girl that goes to the gym over her lunch hour like I do.  I believe she works at the government complex because I have seen her walking around there on multiple occasions.  She is a pretty girl but like so many females and mankind in general, she is overweight.  She could stand to lose 20 to 30 pounds.

She is always on her cell phone.  When she walks in she is on the phone, when she is on the cross training machine she is on the cell phone as she walks out, yes on the phone.  Who in the world has that much to say?

Anyway, last week I was doing cardio and I was on a machine behind her so I could see her machine settings.  She had it on level 1 and never increased it.  She hops her fat ass on there for 15 minutes on level one, talking on the cell phone and thinks she is “working out”.  Level one is a just above sitting in a chair, activity-wise.  There is no resistance. If you are going to make the effort to go to the gym why not make it worth your while and exercise at a level where you are actually doing something? She never touches a weight, never does a situp, just 15 minutes, level one and outta there, big woop. 

On the other hand, there is another guy at the gym, a guy that I first identified at JFZ, heavy breather guy. Unfortunately he is one of the many that migrated to Powerhouse. This guy hyperventilates the entire time he is there.  He likes to superset between different body parts.  He walks across the gym, heavy breathing, gets a drink, heavy breathing, blows his nose, yes more heavy breathing.

Luckily Powerhouse plays their music quite a bit louder than JFZ did so much of his breathing is drowned out.  The guy appears to have the personality of a stapler.  He never speaks to anyone, just heavy breathing.

I was benching today and in between sets I was doing my normal thing, walking around looking tired.  All of a sudden I noticed the guy on the bench next to me was sitting up with the weights plopped across his thighs, the classic posture after you just got stuck rolling the weights off your chest.  He was an older guy with a crazy eye. He didn’t have much weight on there, only 35 pounds per side so I wasn’t even thinking about keeping an eye on him. 

When I saw what happened I immediately came over and offered assistance, lifting the bar off him and reracking it.  I apologized for not noticing he had a problem.  The guy said it was no big deal.  I could tell he was embarrassed.  The guy musn’t have made a peep or else I would have been quicker to jump in.

I’ve had a problem with misspeaking and mumbling for a long time.  I remember starting to deal with it as I hit my late teens and over time it seems at least to me to be worsening.  Something will sound normal in my mind but it comes out as mumbled or I mean one thing but say another or I totally forget a word that is common place.  It is almost like my brain locks up, like a computer.  When this happens in conversation with someone it normally snowballs.  I feel embarrassed that I f’d something up and then that causes more f ups.  I had an example of it on Friday after work. 

I stopped by at the bike store near the grocery store.  I was looking for some handlebar extensions that would allow me to sit more upright while riding the bike for longer periods of time.  I stepped inside and the guy behind the counter asked me what I was looking for.  As I went to explain it, the words “handle bars” escaped me.  I could not remember the words that described the steering on a bike.  So, scrambling I replace the word with whatever I could think of. “Do you have extensions for the, uh STEERING WHEEL for a bike?”  The man paused for a sec and told me where they were.  I knew I sounded like a f’in idiot.

This sort of stuff happens way too often.  It does seems to be a bit streaky.  There are times when I feel like I can hardly put a sentence together.  There are a few times where I feel almost normal.  It makes me think there is some sort of chemical thing in my head that causes this behavior.  It is maddening.  It is the primary reason that I am so biased towards electronic communication.  It allows me to think things out, double check them and only send them out once I am sure it makes sense, unlike the words flying out of my mouth.

Wow it was a wet weekend here.  We got somewhere between 3 and 4 inches.  This time it was enough rain to stick, we now have our normal summertime ponds spread throughout the property.  I would really like to have fill dumped in these low spots and spread to fix the problem but it would cost a lot of dough.  Dirt is expensive.

We watched the neighbor’s Jack Russel from Wednesday to Sunday.  It was cute watching her and Nicki play.  Every night Zoe would jump up in bed with us.  Nicki jumps up on bed too, but she hops off and sleeps on her dog bed overnight.  Not Zoe, as a matter of fact she likes to burrow under the covers and wedge herself against a warm body.  It’s funny. The funniest moment of dog sitting came when I walked back into the bedroom and saw Zoe with her front paws wrapped around my big overstuffed volleyball pillow, humping it.  I said “Zoe, what are you doing?”  She glanced over at me and went back to humping.  I had Ali wash all the bed coverings after Zoe went home. 🙂

Yesterday afternoon we went to see Superman.  It was a great movie.  I liked this guy as Superman more than Christopher Reeve believe it or not.  Modern day special effects make Superman’s abilities much more realistic and exciting as opposed to the cheesy things they had to do with the original Superman flicks.  It was 2 and a half hours long but sitting through it wasn’t tough.  You can tell there will be tons of sequels, I look forward to them.

Speaking of sequels, they showed a preview of Spiderman 3 with Venom and the Sandman.  Man that looks awesome.  Ali laughed when I whispered to her “Man, that looks awesome!”  She said that was what the little kid in front of us just said.

Over the weekend we had another snake camped at our screen door.  This snake was different than any I had seen up to this point.  It wasn’t very long but it was thick around the body and had a big head.  It was thickest snake I have seen on our property.  Tim identified it as a water snake. It looks like this. Non-venomous but would certainly hurt if he chomped down on you.  I tried to use the pool skimmer to pick him up and relocate him but he would have none of it.  He scurried and buried himself inside a bushy plant off the corner of the lanai.  I left him there and just have been careful when steeping foot outside.

Wednesday I have a knee doc appointment.  We are going to go over my MRI and I get the first of my injections of artificial knee fluid.  I am a bit freaked by needles to begin with, I imagine to get to where it needs to go, it will be a long needle.  I’d be lying if I didn’t say I have more than a little anxiety about it.  Supposedly they numb the area. We’ll see.

We got to see our friends baby on Saturday.  He is a cute little boy.  Of course one of the jokes was how I didn’t feel the need to hold the baby.  I picked him up and handed him to Ali, that was close enough.  I think there are reasons for this that go too deep to discuss here.

I think the goal of most people in life is to be unique in some way.  Do something, drive something, own something, say something that makes them different from the rest of the ants in the ant hill. Few succeed, most succumb.

Over my lifetime I have had many ideas about my career. (I may have posted a blog entry about this in the past but I don’t remember)  I can’t quite recall what was my first career idea it was either a cartoonist or meteorologist.  I loved cartoons and was also into the weather.  I think for a brief period being an astronomer was my career path. 

Then I took up baseball and from about the age of 11 to 17 I thought professional baseball was going to be my thing.  It was foolish to not think of any other vocation since the odds of being a pro athlete are so slim but that was my plan.  When that fell apart I bounced around wildly in my job path. 

The first time I went to college it was for a computer science major. I was leaning towards being some sort of programmer. However I dropped out after 3 months.  The second time I went to college it was as an education major.  I had ideas of being a teacher of some sort.  That idea was misguided and I think the reason I even considered it had more to do with wanting to relive my high school days than wanting to teach.  I would have made a terrible teacher.  I dropped out of school this time after about a month.

I went through a hard period of just doing shitty jobs for little money and not really knowing what I wanted to do.  I cut firewood for 3 months for 20-40 bucks a day.  It was the hardest money I ever worked for.  Each day I would be exhausted.

After my lumberjack stint I landed a job at Weis markets in the meat department.  I started off as a chicken cutter making around 5 bucks an hour.  After 3 years there I had been elevated to a full scale meat cutter making maybe $6.50 an hour.  That job was a total drag.  Imagine working in a room that is 50 some degrees all the time and  that has permanent scuz on the floor from various meat products falling on it.  Every day I came home smelling of meat.  My boots were covered in dried meat particles.

Not to mention the job was very dangerous.  Working with knives and saws all day is hairy stuff.  I met more than one fellow meat cutter missing parts of fingers.  I actually did have some fun there interacting with my co-workers there.  The produce manager and I would often have strength competitions where we would see who could press a 40 pound bag of potatoes over their head the most times.

There was a lot of romance going on at Weis for me.  I had some action going on with several women and met my first wife there as well.  However I realized there was no long term future in meat cutting and continued my search for a meaningful vocation.

I applied out of the blue for a job selling cars at Savage Hyundai.  I had no sales experience but they didn’t care.  They wanted someone they could teach to sell the way they wanted anyway.  I was blown away that I got hired.  How cool, I get to wear nice clothes that don’t smell like meat, have my own desk and even get to drive a dealer demo car around!  What a life!

The job was crazy.  The sales force we had was fillled with all sorts of interesting personalities, probably the most interesting bunch I ever worked with.  The excitement of making a sale was unlike anything I had done up to that point in my career.  Like most beginner’s I had some good luck at first and sold a decent amount of cars.  However over time, the job became incredibly stressful.  The job was basically all commission.  If you sold nothing in a week, you were paid $75 BEFORE taxes.  Car sales is very hot/cold.  During a weekday you could be sitting there staring out the window all day with no customers.  If one did show up you had to approach them immediately and apply the pressure without trying to seem like you were applying pressure, a difficult thing. On a Saturday it was a crazy zoo, if you had time to stop and eat at all, you would inhale it without chewing and get right back on the sales floor, you didn’t want to miss an “up”.

I was taught all sorts of tricks to manipulate people towards buying a car.  Some of the games that were played were very humourous.  If someone called on the phone asking for a price on a used car in the paper we were told to bang on our desks and make noise so it sounded like we were in the garage.  Then we would say “I’m sorry I am in the shop, can I have your name and number and I will call you right back when I get to the showroom where I have the information” Bang, we had your name and number and you just got on our “Prospect list” which meant you would be getting regular calls from me until you bought a car somewhere. It worked 90% of the time.

Some of the dead time would be spent making calls to people selling vehicles in the paper, figuring they were looking to buy as well.  It all just got to be a real drag.  At the end of my 13 month span in car sales I was on the verge of a breakdown. I thought I hit the big time when I bagged car sales and snagged a job doing inside sales at Donnelly Directory.

The Donnelly Directory was tring to take a bite out of the yellow pages business.  My job was to cold call businesses, trying to convince them that it was important to advertise in both directories.  They wanted us to do all this prep work before each call.  They told us to look up information about the business we were calling so we could plug this information into the script we were working off of.  We were to look up the businesses competitors and see if they advertised in our book and if they did point it out.  We were supposed to have an A, B and C pitch for advertising ranging from pricey to cheap., start high, work low.  This prep work easily took a half hour per business you were calling. The kicker was after all this prep you would get to “Hi this is Shawn from the Donnelly Directory……” and hear the CLICK.  All that work to get hung up on.  It drove me mad.  The place sucked and I quit after 3 months with nothing else lined up, I just had had it.

At this point was very lost in what I wanted to do.  Meat cutting, wood cutting, and sales were OUT. For a few months I did work for my dad around his place.  I painted, mowed grass and did other odd jobs.  I felt like a loser having to resort to having Dad employ me in my early 20’s. 

I finally came up with a plan.  I decided to again pursue the computer field.  I always had a love for computer/video games so it made sense for me to make a career out of it.  I enrolled in Licoln Tech in Allentown for their night time computer technician course.  I also landed another horrible job for the day time hours working for Goodwill Indutries.

Goodwill was just a a disgusting job.  I started out as a truck helper, meaning I rode around with a driver from store to store and dropped off stuff for them to sell and picked up the donations that were dropped off at the store.  The first driver I got paired up with, Randy was a big fat guy that had incredible stink which was a combination of BO and ass.  I literally had to breath through my mouth whenever I was in the cab with him.  The guy was big, fat and slow, meaning I got to do the lion share of the work.  After unloading the “good” stuff we would pull up to the piles of donations which was mostly garbage, and throw them in the truck, once they were thrown in the truck they had to be thrown again to the front of the truck and stacked somewhat.  There were many times where the truck by the end of the day was packed from floor to ceiling, front to back with bags, furniture, toys and whatever other assorted junk people left.

After getting back to the plant we had to unload all the junk.  Right by the dock doors they had a huge trash compactor which was there for good reason, most of the stuff that was taken in was thrown out.  It was amazing what people would “donate”, broken tv’s , dirty underwear, sofa’s that reeked of cat piss, you name it we saw it.  It was staggering how many people used Goodwill as a glorified trash collector.

As time progressed I advanced to a floater meaning at times I would also drive the trucks.  I never had any truck driving experience but I did surprisngly well adapting to driving a 26 foot straight body truck.  I never had an accident.  Luckily after I got promoted I didn’t have to go out with Randy much.  I heard that Randy was later killed at a railroad crossing.

All the time I was working this shitty Goodwill job I was going to school 3 nights a week.  It was a long year.  I would get up and go to the gym at 6am, get to work at 7:30 am and then drive to Allentown and not get home until 11:30 or so.  I was tired all the time.  It was during this grueling year that I had my last accident.  I was dozing off as I went around a corner in my Integra.  I was going too fast and lost control, spinning out and in the process hitting the front end on an embankment that left my bumper just barely holding on. 

I graduated but had no job lined up so I kept trudging along at Goodwill until my big break came.  I had put in a resume with Entre computers about a month prior to getting a call for an interview.  When I had the interview they told me that they had over 100 applicants for the job, an entry level position integrating computers.  However they had several other Lincoln Tech grads on staff and were pleased with them so that was going in my favor.  A few days later I got the call that I was hired, I was thrilled.

Entre was a small but very fast growing company. Very few people made very good money but everyone worked very hard.  I started out at a measly 16k a year, salaried.  I was totally green to the pc environment, I had a Commodore Amiga at home that I knew inside out but PC’s were a foreign language to me.  Luckily the poeple that helped me out in the beginning were patient, one of whom was Keener.  Keener  was a young gun there that had responsibility that far outpaced his salary.  Looking back it was outrageous what he was paid for what he did.  However he took the time to help me with the ropes.  There is a moment that I will never forget when I was installing Lotus 2.4 (for dos) on a new pc and it came to the prompt where it tells you to insert the next disk and hit enter to continue.  I asked Keener if it was ok to hit enter, which he chuckled while he said yes, amused by my inexperience. I quickly found out that what I learned at Lincoln Tech was basically worthless in my job.  If I used 1% of what we learned at school that was optimistic.

Keener was one of several guys I worked with that were from a similar mold, all younger guys in their early to mid-20’s that were busting their ass for little pay for no other reason than they wanted to do a good job.  It was really an interesting mix of people that made working there a lot of fun even though the pay was little more than McDonald’s wages.

I did all sorts of odd jobs in the beginning.  I was responsible for company van maintenance.  I had to check the oil every week, verify the travel logs were being filled out  and take them to the carwash if they were dirty.  I was also the shipping guy who checked in and shipped out everything.  I put together furniture, took down light fixtures and handled just about any shitty job that had to be done.  Oddly enough, I still felt good about where I was going.  I enjoyed working on computers.

Eventually I was recognized as having some ability and started getting promoted.  They hired people under me to do the grunt work and I got to do just new system integration.  I did a good job there and got moved to the tech position where I would be going on site to fix pc’s and printers.  It was interesting. I got to meet lots of people, be exposed to lots of situations and had a chance to build my confidence as I would triumph over various technical obstacles that were thrown up at me each day.

Through a combination of people leaving and my skills increasing, I eventually got promoted to lead tech.  As lead tech I was given the responsibility of handling the hard issues, ironing out customers that were dissatisfied and providing support for the other techs.  It was a role I really enjoyed.  I knew I found a career at that point.

Arouind this time period is when my first marriage hit the rocks.  Well techincally it was on the rocks before it began but that is another story.  I would be going out 2 or 3 times a week to O’Kelley’s and drinking, heavy.  I would go with a few of my co-workers/friends that also had some problems of their own.  We found comfort in each other’s misery.  There were some crazy conversations that went on.  I was new to alcohol use, only starting when I was 24 years old.  I made up for lost time.

The company did what most small growing companies do, get bought out.  First they were purchased by Ameridata, a national hodge podge of tech companies.  It was pitched to us as something positive with better benefits, more resources, blah blah blah but it was the beginning of the end.

During the Ameridata period I eventually moved up the ladder to being a network tech.   Network tech’s billed at a higher rate than hardware techs, thus they generated more income and were paid more.  Moving into networking allowed me to break the magical 30k a year salary mark, what I deemed to be a small fortune at that point, wahoo!!

Somewhere around that point the company was sold once again, this time to GE Capital.  Again it was pitched as a great thing.  Imagine having the power of a worldwide company like GE behind you.  What a bunch of BS.  All GE did was make our jobs miserable.  We lost the power to make decisions ourselves, we could not react without getting approvals up the corporate ladder.  By that time Keener had jumped ship years ago and most of of the core group that I came in with and were so fond of had already jumped ship, sick of the bullshit in one area or another.  I stuck it out out to the very end before I left to move here.  By the time I left I had spent the last few years as rented, dedicated on site support staff, first I served as the network admin for the local Bayer plant and then I went to Sovereign Bank as one of the network admins.  Gone were the days where each day had fresh faces, different locations and loads of diversity. 

The time at Sovereign was more play than work.  Our group did as much screwing off as working.  It was fun but at the same time it almost felt dishonest taking money for acting like monkeys all day.  Well anyway that takes me to present day which has been documented to death over the last 3 years of this blog’s existence.  My current job is steady, well paying and most days, boring.  I’ve traded excitement and diversity for stability, money, a pension and control.  Most days it seems like a good deal, some it doesn’t.

Our neighbors are out of town for a few days and we are dog sitting their little Jack Russel, Zoe.  She is very hyper in comparison to Nicki but very cute.  She slept with us last night in bed, under the covers, smashed up against my side.  Her and Nicki get along great, it’s very funny watching the little pooch chase huge Nicki (in comparison) around the house.  Zoe shares Nicki’s disdain for cats and chases ours whenever the opportunity arises.  I do nothing to discourage this behavior.

I went back to the orthodontist again today.  While I was there I asked him if we could remove the metal bar retainer that is glued to my bottom teeth and just use the plastic retainer I wear at night. He said he was hesitant to do so because so many people aren’t good about wearing their retainer.  I told him with the money I spent, there was no way I would not wear my retainer.  I pointed out how the wire made it virtually impossible to floss my front teeth which is going to result in problems sooner or later.  So he said they could remove it and cast me for a new plastic retainer.

The removal process was uncomfortable.  First the woman used a tool to pry the wire out of the glue.  At times it felt like my teeth would break free before the wire would.  Then the grinding tool came out to remove the globs of glue.  I just am not a fan of having power tools in my mouth.

Finally all the fun was done, they cast me for the new retainer and I went to the front desk to set my next appointment.  The lady behind the desk tells me there will be 100 dollar charge for the lower retainer.  Huh?, I said, looking bewildered.  I told her I had a new cast done for a new retainer but did not know I was being charged extra for it.  She excused herself and brought the orthodontist out.  He stood there for a few seconds just staring at me with a silly look on his face.  I broke the silence by saying in a somewhat annoyed voice, “WHAT?”  He said that I requested that he remove the metal retainer and make a new plastic one so they have to charge me for it.  I told him that nobody mentioned anything about additional charges for it, that was why I asked.  He switched gears and made a joke about not telling the girls at the front desk about stuff so they can take the heat.  I pursused it further and got a clarification.  I asked if I would need another retainer in the future because one broke or something, I would be charged for it?  Yes.  Off he went to back to work.  The lady behind the desk could tell I was annoyed.  I didn’t pay for the retainer yet because it won’t be ready till Monday.  I guess I am off base for assuming that dropping eleven grand for Ali and I to get braces would entitle us to lifetime free retainers. No consideration is given for the fact that my treatment plan has gone about double the length I was told it would. Not to mention the fact that really, the orthodontist screwed up by putting a metal retainer in and then realizing I needed a full plastic retainer to keep teeth further back in place. I really am sick of this place. I am hesitant about going nuts on them about it because I am not done with my top teeth so I have to rely on them for awhile yet.  I think after I am done, they will be getting a letter about my experience with them. 

I have gotten several comments regarding the humor of my vomit in the sink episode of the past weekend.  I’m happy to be able to provide a small sliver of humor into people’s days, even if it is as a result of my guts turning inside out.

I had my MRI yesterday.  It was the open sort of MRI as opposed to the coffin like ones (which I’ve been in before)  With an MRI they tell you to lay absolutely still so of course you get the urge to flinch.  During the first part of the exam I repeatedly surpressed feeeling in my left leg to spasm.  Later on I got drowsy and was almost asleep several times.

When the doc examined my knees on Monday he pointed out to me about my bow legs and how it causes the stress of impact to go through the inside of my knee (where the pain is) instead through the center of the knee like straight legged people.  I remember my grandfather had bow legs too. 

After work yesterday I bought a replacement bike seat for my 15 year old bike.  When I have been doing my security ride behinds during Ali’s runs my ass had been getting hella-sore.  The new seat was a nice improvement.  Now I just need to get some sort of handlebar thing that allows me to sit more upright.  Staying hunched over just is not comfortable at my advanced age.

Big Brother All Stars was great last night.  There are just so many strong personalities under one roof it makes for great entertainment.

I didn’t play one minute of WoW yesterday and survived, imagine that.

I HAVE to get out to see Superman this weekend, I can’t believe I haven’t seen it yet.  Ali has been busting my ass about not seeing any chick flicks with her.  My argument is that I don’t mind seeing them but to me, seeing them in a theater is  a waste of money.  Chick flicks do not benefit from a big screen environment as opposed to action films which are greatly enhanced by the big screen and booming surround sound.  So in the next few weeks we will be watching some chick flicks, at home.  Hopefully I can stay awake.

I got around to putting the edited version up there.

 You can see it here

The music selection has meaning on multiple levels.  Don’t expect to be doing cartwheels after this one, but hey, what can I say, the day sucked. No fancy effects, no crazy scene transitions.

It was quite the weekend.  You would figure having Mom over for a couple days of sitting by the pool relaxation would be rather subdued, which for the most part was.  Mom said she was coming over Saturday morning after she did a few things around her place.  So we were surprised when she pulled up around 9 ish.  We were still finishing up some last minute preparations.

I was very tired.  I was up until 2:30 am.  No I wasn’t playing WoW.  I was working on two projects.  The first one involved trying to fix my 2 satellite radios.  I bought an old, beatup, used unit off ebay for 6 dollars.  It looked like whomever owned it had very dirty fingers.  However it was the older model that had 2 of the antenna connectors that are defective on my radio.  One of the two was trashed terribly, the other one was in good shape.  So I tore into it and before long managed to remove the connector from the old unit.  Getting it installed into my radio was another story.

Removal of the connector and it’s corresponding cord meant popping it out of a weird connector on the circuit board that had a removable spring like top to it.  The piece was incredibly small, small enough that trying to manipulate it with your fingers was pointless, I had to use tweezers.  When I attempted to reinstall the pirated connector to my radio I literally spent an hour trying to snap this little piece back into place but I just couldn’t get it.  It would slide off, pop off and just would not go back on.  Finally I had enough and decided to try a rig job.  I squeezed the sides of the connector together so it would hold the antenna cord in place with pressure from the sides instead of the top.  It seemed to work.  I put the deal back together, snapped it into the car and viola, it works. 

The other radio repair was much easier. The back of that one looks like it was half melted so it never seated properly into the cradle.  So I just swapped the plastic back piece with my ebay unit.  Once again a successful operation.

The other project I had going was a hard drive upgrade for the server I have at home which also happens to be used as Ali’s workstation.  The 40 gig hard drive I had in it was filling up in the C partition.  Normally a hdd swap is a no brainer.  I have done hundreds of them over the years.  Well this one was not.

  The plan was to go to an 80 gig hdd I had laying around.  I had brought home my ghost boot disk from work. The disk had an older version of ghost on it, 7.5 but I figured I would give it a try.  The copy went along without error, I restarted the system off the 80 gig drive and it came up.  However there was a driver error on boot and after a little digging I noticed that all I had was a C partition and no D partition.  Hmmm odd, I thought.  Maybe I didn’t select both partitions?  So I shut it down and repeated the procedure again, making sure my drowsiness didn’t affect my selections.  Same deal. 

Well I was getting pissed now.  I theorized that maybe Ghost 7.5 wasn’t very compatible with Windows 2003 Server.  I VPN’d into work and grabbed the 8.0 version. Well then the really weird stuff started happening.  The system started acting like it had a hardware problem.  Any attempt to boot off a floppy or CD would result in the HDD light going on solid and just hanging there.  After seating and reseating every hard drive related cable several times it suddenly started to work. 

Well this getting a bit long winded so let me just wrap it up by saying the system is back up, however the C partition is on the 80 gig hard drive, the D partition is on the original 40 gig hard drive and no I didn’t intend it to be that way and no I’m not sure how it even got that way.  But by 2:30 in the morning I was too tired to give a shit. It works, good nuff.   While I was waiting for the multiple ghost operations to finish I spent most of the time going through this guy’s stuff on youtube.  Funny kid.

Well anyway, Mom hadn’t been out to our house since Christmas, yes Christmas.  We showed her the latest and greatest around the property.  She liked all of our new outdoor furniture and our landscape additions.  Within an hour or so we were out on the lanai relaxing by the pool.  Like I said I was very tired.  Tired enough to fall aslep while floating in the pool for a good hour or so. The reflective water helped bake me pretty well in that short period.  My chest got very red.

We pretty much just chilled all afternoon.  We invited the neighbors over for drinks that night.  Mom met Rick before but not Doug.  They came over right on time, bringing wine and some food.  They always bring stuff with them when they come over.  I always tell them it isn’t necessary.  Ali said that is the polite thing to do.  I guess I am not polite.

For some reason I had it in my head to drink that night.  I started out slow with 2 or 3 beers.  But then I pulled out the heavy artillery, the Goldschlager that had been sitting in our freezer forever.  I had had it once before.  It has a cinnamon taste that burns a bit as it goes down.  I did a shot.  Then I did a couple more within 15 minutes.  I was feeling happy but not horribly drunk.  The next 3 rounds of shots I gave Rick one as well.  He never had Goldschlager before.  By the time those 3 were done there was only a couple shots left in the bottle so I decided to finish them myself.

So I had about 7 or 8 shots of Goldschlager in me.  I now was acting more drunk but felt ok otherwise.  I felt good enough to hunt for my next source of alcohol which turned out to be orange vodka.  I made my own concotion which consisted of half vodka, half tangerine juice.  Normally the taste of it would not have been appealing but my taste buds were pretty much dead at that point.  I guzzled down two of these drinks. Now I was doing silly things like cannonballs in the pool, the second time while still wearing my baseball hat.  I did all my conversation from the pool while everyone else sat up on the deck.  Yep I was full bore drunk now.

I had to make several trips to the bathroom, on my final one I decided I was chilly so I would take a warm shower.  As I was in the shower my drunkedness became more apparent, I was feeling a bit woozy, and sleepy.  So after I stumbled out of the shower I dry off and then flop down on the bed. Big mistake.  As soon as I laid down the inferno started.  Even though my eyes were closed, everything was spinning.  The nausea started coming like water in a backed up toilet.  This was not going to be good…..

I went into the bathroom and stood over the sink.  I stood there for a long time.  Ali came in and asked if I was ok and I mumbled something indicating I was although obviously I was not.  The naseau was coming in waves.  I could feel the sweat forming on my back.  Why I chose to stand over the sink as opposed to the toilet is not clear.  I think it had something to do with the cleanliness of one versus the other.

Well I stood there haunched over for a long time, at least 10-15 minutes but nothing came up.  I decided to try laying back down.  Well that did the trick, this time the naseau came surging on.  I stumbled back in to the bathroom and let loose, once again in the sink.  My eyes were closed so I would not see the results but I had the quick thinking to turn on the water to help rinse down the vomit, yea right, smart move.

The act of vomiting is like a snowball.  You vomit and then the smell, taste and texture of the vomit makes you vomit more.  It’s horrible.  I did notice that when you are in the midst of such an episode your world becomes incredibly focused.  All of your worldly concerns, hang ups and problems dissolve.  All that matters is making the vomitting stop. 

Ali came in after the first go round and saw the mess in the sink.  By running the water I managed to fill the sink with vomit soup.  The solid food in the puke instantly clogged the drain.  She told me to move to the toilet which I did.  She was angry with me for drinking to this point, I have not puked from drinking since our honeymoon 8 years ago.

Once I was postioned on the toilet the vomitting continued for awhile.  My stomach ached from the convulsions.  I was covered in sweat and had some puke on my clothes.  Ali came in later and found me on the bathroom floor, barely conscious.  She told me later she was considering calling 911 because I wasn’t really responding to her. Well I laid on the bathroom floor for awhile.  Ali came in again I commanded me to get up.  My world was still hazy but I managed to crawl from the bathroom floor to the bedroom floor where I passed out.  Ali said I was on the floor when she went to sleep, sometime during the night I climbed into the bed but I don’t remember doing it.

The aftermath the next morning wasn’t good.  I felt tired and wiped.  I was afraid to walk into the bathroom.  Ali had left the door closed and the exhaust fan all night so I knew it had to be bad. It was like I was entering a crime scene.  The sink had drained most of the water and left all the dried residue all the way to the top.  There was remnants on the floor, on the toilet, it was horrible.  Of course this was my punishment, I had to clean it up.

Clean up was slow and nasty, I used mounds of paper towels to scoop what I could into a trash bag.  I had to breath through my mouth the entire time else I would have thrown up again.  After a lot of work I had the sink and toilet looking respectable.  I tried to laugh about the whole ordeal with Ali but she would have none of that.  She was mad that I let myself get that drunk.  I told her that wasn’t the plan and it was only the second time I threw up from drinking with her in 8 years so that isn’t too bad.

Considering how bad I felt, my Sunday hangover wasn’t bad.  I felt very drained and low energy but did not have a headache.  My mom asked how I was.  I just vegged out at the table on the lanai for awhile, I didn’t feel like doing much.  I was badly dehydrated. 

Mom shoved off for home around noon.  She could have stayed longer but I think she thought she was holding us up.  It was another great day for sitting by the pool.  Once she left Ali and I tackled the grass mowing, I certainly was not looking forward to it but by that time my condition had improved to the point where I was able to cope.

During the weekend I had to go pick up gas for the mower.  I decided to take Nicki with and take the party van, I hadn’t driven it since we got back from PA. So we hopped in.  As I went to pull out I immediately noticed the gas pedal felt like it was stuck, it didn’t seem to respond to my foot.  Once I got out onto the road, I responded how any man would with something that is stuck, you push harder.

Well now the van took off, and kept accelerating.  Whatever was making it not want to go down was also preventing it from releasing. So the accelerator was basically mashed to the floor.  I immediately smash the brakes to try to slow down.  The brakes were only marginally stronger than the power of the motor so I was only slowing down very gradually.  The stop sign was coming up so I had to quickly grab for the keys and turn the thing off, killing it instantly since it was still in DRIVE. WTF was going on?

So I pop the hood and jam my hand in to the accelerator mechanism and try to move it.  It is very sticky.  So I manually move it back to around idle speed, start the van back up and putt putt back to the driveway.  I am cursing the van as I remove the air cleaner box so I could get a better look at it.  Ali came out in the middle of the process and was my gas pedal girl, pressing and relasing it for me as I tried to see what was binding.  I didn’t see anything obvious besides the springs looked crusted and rusty.  So I figure, what the hell, let’s hit it with some WD-40.

So I grab the can from the garage and soak the accelrator arm while I have Ali repeatedly press the pedal.  Slowly the range of motion returns to the pedal.  What the hell?  I buttoned it all back up and took it for a road test and it was fine.  My theory is with all the rain over the past 3 weeks and the van just sitting there the springs got a light coating of rust on them.  It’s not very reassuring but it’s the only explanation I can come up with.  The incident further cemented the van’s fate. It will be going up on Auto Trader in the not too distant future. If I’m lucky I can get what I paid for it.  I am already writing off the nearly 3k I sunk into the damn thing.

This morning I had my knee doctor visit.  After xrays and a brief examination the doc said he thinks I tore the meniscus in my left knee (same thing I did to the right one years ago)  My right knee looked a bit beat up too but for that one he is prescribing injections of some sort of artificial knee fluid.  The left one is going to get MRI’d tomorrow and then depending on what that reveals, I may have to have that one scoped to fix the damage.  It’s a bummer.

In the continuing saga of growing old, I discovered after I got to my office today after the doctor visit, that I had my shirt on inside out.  Yes, inside out. I have no idea how I didn’t notice. So I was walking around the doc’s office with my damn shirt inside out.  I must of looked like an idiot.

So the lessons learned over the past 3 days:

1. Excessive drinking leads to excessive vomitting

2. When vomitting, the toilet is always a better option than the sink

3. Wear your clothes right side out

Ever since WoW has become my predominant hobby my time in front of the boob tube has been much lighter.  Right now I am watching Hell’s Kitchen and Big Brother All Star’s. 

Hell’s Kitchen is basically a show about a lunatic british chef screaming at wanna be cooks.  Hearing a brit swearing with an accent is just appealing I guess, I love the show.  Big Brother is a great show normally, having an all star cast makes it better.  Everyone knows how each other played the game last time so it makes strategy much more challenging to develop.   All of the people I hoped would be in the cast were selected.  It’s good stuff.

The other thing I watch on TV a lot is mixed martial arts fighting, namely the UFC and Pride Fighting.  I just can’t get enough of that stuff.  I remember when UFC was so taboo that you could only see it on pay per view.  Bringing it to Spike TV was BRILLIANT.  I was bummed that Hoyce Gracie got beat up by Matt Hughes.  I remember when Hoyce started the UFC by taking down guys that outweighed him by 100 pounds or more. It was amazing.  I think Ken Shamrock needs to hang it up, he is still in great shape but he just doesn’t have it anymore.  Tito has made him look very old. 

This weekend mom is coming out Saturday and staying over till Sunday to hang out.  We don’t see mom as much as we would like.  Mom thinks that the 16 or 17 miles from her house to ours is more like 100.  She doesn’t like driving much at all since she had her accident a few years back.  We are hoping to have lots of just relaxing by the pool time.

I’ve been talking to Ali about how we need to really make some concentrated efforts to be more mindful of where our dollars are going.  There are so many little things we can change that when added up can make a sizeable difference in our spending. 

Both of my Audiovox satellite radios are giving me problems.  The PNP2 model that I have is just a shitty design.  The antennae connector is not made to hold up to repeated connections to different docks (car/home/boombox) and after time the metal insulator starts to bend causing it to not seat properly.  In the car we constantly have to press the unit back into place because we lose connection.  I really want to get rid of them for different units but then again there comes that money thing again.

Monday is the knee doc.  I have sort of resigned myself to not expecting to take up volleyball or running again.  I want to get his opinion and possibly a MRI to see exactly what is f’d up.  I would prefer to not go under the knife again, however I trust this guy’s opinion so we’ll see what he says.  I can walk normally now although things like getting out of a chair are tough.  I actually did very limited, very light leg things at the gym yesterday.  Each rep brought an assortment of little twings, twitches and ouchies but nothing horrible. Of course I was doing less weight than I normally would warm up with.

If I do have to give up impact activities I will go full bore back into my supplementation to get bigger and stronger.  Hulk SMASH!