Archives January 2007

For a long time I have needed to get some new pants for work.  A bunch of my Gap khaki’s were literally falling apart.  The cuffs at the bottom were fraying and a couple pair started to fray right by the zipper.  They have been that way for a long time but I just kept putting off buying new pants.  I just hate spending money on clothes.  Well I finally had enough on Monday and went online to gap.com and bought myself 4 new pair of pants.  Thank God for the internet, it allows me to clothe myself without stepping foot in a store.

Here are the pictures of the aftermath of my Christmas tree removal.  As you can see, the needle carnage was quite extreme.  I don’t know if I will try to push the limits of xmas tree longevity next year.  It was quite the mess.

We have an annoying situation at work.  Ever since I have worked here there have been issues with parking.  When I first started here, the first row of our parking lot was reserved for the general public to use, the rest was open game.  We also had the ability to use the church parking lot that was right next door to us.  During the heart of the day, parking has always been a challenge to find.  Well as time passed, the parking situation has become increasingly more annoying, and the lion share of the blame comes from people associated with the church that have nothing better to do than whine and complain about the use of spaces that they don’t use.

A couple years ago the church started putting home made signs on certain spots that indicated CHURCH PARKING ONLY.  If a car was parked in such a spot and the church nazi’s inside witnessed the driver walking towards the government center, they would scurry out and leave a ominous warning on the windshield.  It was annoying bullshit.  Eventually an edict was passed down that we were only allowed to park in the one row of the church lot, adjacent to us.  The county actually pays the church for the use of these spots.

Well a little over a year ago, the county broke ground on a large parking garage that consumed a huge block of parking for county employees.  At that time we were told that construction should only take 6 months and after that time period we could go back to our normal parking situation.  The county went as far as to repaint all the wheel stops in each parking space.  The ones that county employees were allowed to park in were painted green, all others were painted white and tagged PUBLIC ONLY.  Several memos were passed around saying how we should want to better serve our customers and make that parking available to them, they expected us to either park at the green spaces around the far edges of the parking area or park in a parking garage that was ridiculously far away from our office on the far end of the large complex.

When this initial edict came down there was a huge backlash from the employees.  If I parked in that garage I would literally consume half of my lunch hour getting to and from my vehicle which is just total bullshit.  Many people griped about even parking on the far edges of the parking lot because in many cases it doubled or triple the amount of time it took to walk into the building.  Eventually the uproar settled down and people generally just parked in those green spaces or in the first row of the church lot like good little boys and girls.  We complied because it was only temporary and once this massive garage was built the public would have tons of places to park.  Our office employees generally followed the parking rues, however there were tons of county employees from other departments that parked wherever the f they wanted, which added to our frustration.

Well a couple months ago the new garage finally opened, not 6 months but nearly a year after they broke ground.  Finally, we can be done with the bullshit.  Even with the garage open, almost all of our employees continued to still park on the far reaches of the lot and in our designated row in the church, it had become habit by then. The county went around and repainted all the PUBLIC ONLY spots, plain white. Yay the bullshit is over.

 Well yesterday a new edict comes down from the county manager.  He wants employees to use the new parking garage.  He rambles on about how we have it good compared to other county parking situations and how we should no longer park in the church lot at all.  After they just had painted all the wheel stops, they ONCE AGAIN went around and painted PUBLIC ONLY on the spots.  This memo infuriated both me and most of the people I talked to at work.  I immediately saw through the memo as a knee jerk response to appease a few people associated with the church.  There is nothing that annoys me nearly as much as broad strokes that affect the many to appease the whining few that have nothing better to worry about.  It wasn’t like the people that parked in the church lot were doing drugs off their hoods, banging whores or causing any undue problems to the f’in church people.  They just have a bug up their ass. 

Well like I said the reaction here was very bad.  I proclaimed to my co-workers how I absolutely will not be parking in this new garage.  While it is somewhat closer than the other one, travel to and from the garage would easily consume a third of my lunch hour which would make my midday fitness session very unpractical.  Our building is the farthest away from the garage of any on the complex.  There is an “emergency meeting” about this right now.  This morning there were actually “guards” in the church lot, making sure no criminals attempted to park their vehicle in these sacred spaces.  I am sure the county is footing the bill for these guards.  I mean it was just so damn ridiculous.  I am standing firm on my resolution to not park in that garage.  If they want to fire me over my non-compliance to follow the parking laws, let them try. I just can’t stomach this petty crap. 

I’m sure everyone was desperately awaiting the repair of my live office web cam.  Good news, it is back live again. 

This week Ali and I have to work on getting stuff ready for her big race on Saturday.  So far she has over 140 people pre-registered. There are a ton of things that have to come together for a race.  It definitely is much easier to just pay your 20 bucks and run it than to organize it, by far.

Heroes is back on the air and it still ROCKS! That hour just flies by.  I can’t tell you the last time I so looked forward to a show coming on.

My Dad called me yesterday on the way home to talk about him coming to visit.  If things go as planned, he should be rolling into town at the very end of February or beginning of March.  He will be staying for probably a week.  My little brother may coordinate a long weekend trip down here at the same time, that would be cool.  Dad said he would be willing to assist in my sprinkler project.  I hope to at least have started it by then.  It would be cool to have him help though, he would definitely make things go easier.  We will have to get him to Stan’s while he is down here.

Well the truck is back home, safe and sound.  Hell they only charged me an hour labor at the garage, it seems amazing that they had it done that quickly.  I guess having the tools and experience makes a big difference.

I’ve been icing my knees for the past few days to help get the swelling down. The clicking and cracking in my left knee when I go from bent to straight position is less than it was.  I guess that is good.  There are a bunch of 5k’s coming up in the next month that I really would like to run in. 

I missed the gym yesterday again. The past few weeks it seems lke I haven’t had a full normal gym week, it bothers me. 

I started off my weekend working late Friday night replacing the network switches in our office.  Originally I had visions of it running into a two day thing where I would have to come in Saturday morning to finish it up.  Amazingly, things went incredibly smooth.  We had very few issues and I was out the door, on the way home by 8:30 Friday night.  I was quite pleased with myself.

On Saturday Ali had to run errands for a good portion of the day so I played some WoW and worked on stuff around the house.  Luckily we got some rain during the week so watering the landscape was crossed off the list.  One of my jobs was the removal of our nearly month and a half old Christmas tree.  It had started dropping needles pretty badly during the previous week or so, although there was a section of the tree that still looked quite green and healthy.  Originally I was planning on waiting for Ali to help pull the tree out but I decided to go it alone.  Well once I started the removal process I got a true picture of just how dead most of the tree was. 

I put a trashbag on the floor right next to the stand and lifted the tree out and plopped it on the plastic.  Then with one hand on the plastic, the other on the trunk of the tree, I drug it towards the front door.  There wasn’t major needle droppage up to the door, but once I hit the door and had to squeeze the tree through the door jamb, a needle blizzard occurred.  Needles flew off the tree, burying the tile, the front step and my sneakers with dead pine needles.  It was amazing, I actually took a picture of the front door after I pulled the tree through.  I will post it later.  I drug the tree to my normal tree burial point and chucked it in with some remorse.  It was one of the best trees we ever had, it was sad to see it go.  Right up to the point where I pulled it out, Buttons the cat was lying underneath it.  I know the cats miss it.

One of the other things I did on Saturday was replace the battery and the positive battery terminal on the Tacoma, hoping to eliminate the starting problem once and for all.  So I carefully performed the minor procedure, put the new terminal on, connected it to the brand new battery, made sure it was nice and tight and turned the key with great anticipation of the engine roaring to life when I turned the key.  I get behind the wheel, turn the key, CLICK!  DAMN IT.  Well this definitely turned the cause squarely onto a failing starter or more specifically a starter solenoid.  I resigned myself to taking it to the garage.

Well later in the day, shortly after Ali got back, I got some inspiration.  Hey I am sort of mechanically inclined and have tackled various automotive repairs over the years, I can do a starter, it’s only two bolts.  So I do some quick internet research about replacing the starter on the Tacoma.  They advised pulling the passenger front tire and accessing it through the wheel well.  Ok no problem.  So I lug my jack, my creeper, wrenches and sparse socket set down the driveway, ready to do battle.  I was not really dressed for this ordeal, I had on jean shorts. 

Well let’s just say that attempting to replace the starter on a 99 Tacoma has made the “things I never want to do again” list, along with laying ceramic tile, getting hernia exams and buying 88 Corvettes with salvage titles.  What a f’in joke.  So the first steps in removal were to remove the negative lead from the battery and then remove the main cable on the starter itself.  Check, I was able to do that without much issue.  Next step, remove the other lead to the starter, hmmm I saw one connection to it, but it doesn’t look like a thick enough wire.  Ok well I guess I can disconnect that later.  Trying to access the starter was extremely frustrating.  The starter is obviously already installed on the engine when it is dropped into the frame.  They made access to it require either a necessity to have tiny little hands that bent all sorts of unnatural ways or to possess some sort of exotic tool set that was able to get around all the immovable lines, tubes and other metal in close proximity to the starter.

Well anyway, what I read was there were two bolts to remove.  The only two bolts I saw that were obviously removable were two real long ones that held one piece onto the base.  The only thing I had to fit the bolt was a wrench.  Getting the wrench in there was a small miracle, turning the bolt with it required extreme patience as I only got a throw of a few inches each time before the end of the wrench hit something.  But eventually I got them both off.  The thing it was holding on, pulled off but was being held on by some mystery cable in the back, presumably the other lead to for the electrical hookup.   I felt, tugged, and adjusted for a good 15 minutes trying to get the thing out, I just couldn’t do it.  In the process I was getting absolutely covered in dirt and grime, jamming my appendages into the wheel well awkwardly. 

 Well I was very frustrated at this point.  It was the feeling of desperation that you know you are far enough into a project that either direction you go, to completion or back to the where you started is going to be a pain in the ass.  I went back inside and looked for more complete info on the net with maybe some pictures.  I found some pictures and the pictures showed me that what I removed the bolts to was just part of the starter, not the whole thing.  I saw pics of the two bolts I was SUPPOSED to remove.  Ok great, well let’s go see how this goes.

My tool set is not great, and my socket set specifically is very sparse, I have almost no metric sockets and Toyotas of course use all metric bolts so I was trying to use a socket that was as close to 14mm as a 9/16 socket will get you.  Bolt number one was all I even bothered attempting.  I spent another 10-15 minutes trying to find a way to turn the thing.  It was tucked up behind some metal transmission lines and exhaust pipes.  The 9/16 socket sort of fit but my standard, crappy socket driver just could not fit into the space and angles I had available.  It was so frustrating.  I had a 14mm wrench but there was no way to get it into the tiny little space.  Well I had it, I admitted defeat and decided my only course of action was to retreat, to button it all back up and hope it still works at least as well as it did.  I was running low on daylight so I had to hurry up.  It was equally difficult getting what I had apart back together but just as it was getting too dark to see much I got it buttoned back up.  I slapped the key in and turned it, eh a click again, I guess that is good enough.  I told Ali of my defeat and resignation that it has to go to the shop.  I felt like a failure for a good portion of the weekend afterward.  It came down to tools, if I had a socket set with every sort of extension, size and angle available I may have been able to get it.  However it didn’t make me feel any better.  After my ordeal I pulled out my extended warranty papers.  I bought the warranty when I bought the truck.  The clock in my head told me it had been more than 5 years but I wanted to be sure.  Yep, it expired in October 2006.  It figures, I never had to use the warranty.  It looks like things broke right on que.

 Later in the night I had another taste of failure when for the life of me I could not get my Tivo to read video files off my pc like it was supposed to.  I f’d and f’d with it.  I had told Ali we could watch a movie I downloaded on the Tivo.  She got into position, I fired it up and could not get it to work.  Madly I scrambled for a few minutes while Ali waited for me to get it working to no avail.  This, piled onto the Tacoma failure really made my mood rather miserable. I also did some reconfiguration on the network cards on my server which gave me fits for a good hour or so.

On Sunday we were invited to go to a place named Stan’s in Goodland.  Goodland is a tiny, old Florida style town, similar to Everglades City.  I had never heard of Stan’s but evidently it is a well known hangout that is often frequented by bikers and other laid back people looking for good music, fun and a scene that borders on crazy.

  Goodland is a good haul from town and as you approach it you drive down roads that looked like they were cut into the middle of nowhere.  However we immediately noticed there were lots of cars and motorcycles all going the same way, presumably to Stan’s.  There is one way into and out of Goodland.  We turned the corner and saw a mass of people and cars parked wherever they could find a spot.  Stan’s was impossible to miss.

Luckily our one friend was able to find a table in the very crowded eating area.  They had a large outdoor table area as well as some under cover, and indoors.  It reminded me a bit of a large scale Snook Inn.  The crowd of people there was very diverse.  Bikers, young, old, Florida natives and snowbirds filled the place. Lot’s of people didn’t sit and just stood and drank.   Our waitress Maureen, an older woman probably in her 60’s, found us and brought us some alcohol to start off.  How she managed to keep stuff straight is beyond me.  The environment there was just a few steps away from chaos.  After we were on our second round of drinks, the owner, Stan took the stage.  Stan is an old guy, probably in his 70’s at least, but his persona was just brimming with energy, fun, humor and friendliness.  Our friend that came with us and whom had been to Stan’s many times was explaining to us some of traditions, one of which was the singing of the star spangled banner.  After a few jokes and well wishes, Stan had everyone stand for the singing of the song, which was a recording.  All of the several hundred people stood at attention as the song played.  This was not the star spangled banner most of us know.  The song was sung in a very drawn out manner and had additional verses that I had never heard before.  It was the longest song I ever stood for, probably closer to ten minutes than five, it was crazy.  A lot of the people in front of the stage were singing along while holding their hand over their hearts.  There was one older, bald guy I watched repeatedly through the song.  The entire time the song was going he was tapping his hand over his heart.  The song wrapped up and the entertanment began.  The music was loud and had a country flair.  I didn’t mind it but the volume made it necessary to pretty much yell if you wanted to talk to someone across the table.

There were all sorts of interesting people there both as patrons and Stan’s employees.  One was Mullet Mary. Mary is an older than dirt, chubby woman who was wearing a cowgirl outfit with lots of cleavage showing and a skirt that flew up way too often.  She gyrated around the stage in a stripper-eque fashion, embarrassing lots of people along the way, she was very funny.  There was also was Island Woman, a lady who evidently designed her own clothes.  She walked around the seating area the entire time modeling and pitching her clothing.  Each time you saw her go by she had on a different set of clothes and a matching pair of wacky looking sunglasses.

Eventually we got around to ordering food.  There were no real vegetarian meals on the menu besides french fries but Ali asked the waitress if they could just make her a grilled cheese.  The food came out faster than I expected but there was no grilled cheese.  Maureen the waitress apologized and said they wouldn’t make the grilled cheese.  We protested and asked why not.  She said she thought it was dumb and she was going to go back in there and give them hell.  I guess she did because a few minutes later a grilled cheese on a hamburger bun came rolling out, it was funny.

The rest of the time there we just enjoyed ourselves.  I put away four beers or so.  I was trying to drink myself into a better mood which was admittedly still sour form the prior days events.  Hell I was less than thrilled with the idea of going to Stan’s but I am certainly glad I did.  Ali drug me over to the Stan’s gift shop where we looked at the wacky souvenirs.  I tried on a couple silly hats that Ali took pictures of me with them on.  The biggest problem I had while I was there was that I was cold.  I had on shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt.  The temp was only right around 70 with a very persistent cool wind.  I was quite cold when the sun went behind the clouds.  The trips to the bathroom were interesting.  The toilet stall had no door, thankfully noone was doing a number two when I used the urinal.  The bathroom had a smell that was high on the nasty scale.  I would expect no less. 

We took it all in, enjoying the various people making spectacles of themselves.  It really was an environment that you couldn’t help but to have fun at.  As the afternoon went on it got fuller and fuller to the point where the area around the stage was jammed with standing patrons all with smiles on their faces and drinks in their hands.  Eventually we got ready to head out.  We thanked our friends for recommending Stan’s to us.  It definitely jumped up high on the “must take visitors to” list.  It is one of a kind. 

Sunday evening I finally figured out how to watch a downloaded movie on the Tivo.  However I messed up the formatting a bit so the movie we watched “My Super Ex-Girlfriend”, which was in 16:9 format, got compressed to 4:3 format, making most things look skinnier and taller than intended.  Eh it didn’t matter, the movie was lame no matter what format it was in.  Weak plot, no real laughs, just a bad movie.  The only good part was it was 90 minutes long.  C-, maybe even a D+

This morning the first order of business was to get the truck repair addressed.  I called AAA to arrange for a tow.  I tell them it is at my house and I needed it towed to the garage I usually go to.  She takes the info and says, oh I’m sorry, you only have the basic membership, it only covers a tow of up to 5 miles…  the garage is 19 miles from your house and they charge you an extra 4 dollars a mile beyond 5 miles.  Well that is lame.  She said she could find a closer garage but I told her I wanted to take it to the garage I am comfortable with, I’ll eat the 50 bucks or so it would cost me.  In my mind I was trying to figure out how valuable this AAA membership is I have been paying for religiously for the last two decades.  The woman said the towing company should be there within an hour, maybe sooner. Woah!  I told her I was at work and would need at least 40 minutes to get home to meet the tow truck.  She said ok, she would make a note on the call that I would not be home for at least 40 minutes.  Ok great. I hang up.

As soon as I hung up my next call was to the garage, before I could even get an answer from them, my cell phone rings, it’s AAA.  A different woman said she was just calling to tell me that the tow truck would be there in 15 minutes.  What the hell?  I annoyingly told her that I JUST hung up with someone else from AAA and told her I needed at least 40 minutes to get home.  “Oh, it doesn’t say anything about that”  Well that is what I just told her.  The rep tells me that she would just cancel the call and I should call back when I got home.  I am extremely annoyed but had no options, “Fine”.  I hung up, gather my stuff and jump into the party van to head home.

The van has been acting up again.  The random, strong vibration issue has returned.  It is very strange.  It will be motoring along fine when all of a sudden I will feel a mild vibration quickly grow into a very strong vibration.  You would think I was rolling on tires made of wood when it is at it’s worse.  I will come to a stop, take off again and it won’t happen, the next time it may or may not.  Obviously something is f’d up. Trying to explain it to a garage and having them track it down is another frustrating situation that I will have to deal with on the horizon, but not today, I just dealt with my jaw rattling for portions of the drive home.

So I get home, no tow truck there , I guess that is good.  Even though I tried starting the truck at least 20 times on Saturday, I got in once again and threw the key in.  Click, again, click, again click….  once in awhile instead of a click I would get a tiny bit of motor turn and then click.  I went into a starting frenzy, I turned the key back and forth rapidly, non-stop, hoping for a miracle where the starter would align just right to get the motor started.  I bet I clicked that damn thing 50 times.  Then a miracle happened, the stars aligned and it started! Wow, I could hardly believe it.  I left it running and quickly ran in to call AAA to tell them to cancel any calls they had in for me for a tow.  I drove the car down to the garage and dropped it off.  They were very busy but were willing to let me leave it there.  They would try to get to it today.  I just got the call that it is done already.  After they relieve me of 300 bucks I will be back in business.

This morning it was quite chilly by Florida standards, 46 degrees according to my personal weather center.  I went out to the truck and turned the key, a couple turns and then nothing.  I have had issues with it starting recently but I have attributed it to the positive battery cable connection being loose.  Normally I just have to jiggle it a bit and it’s fine.  So I jiggle, same thing.  Jiggle and jiggle and jiggle some more, no dice.  Now I am getting frustrated.  I’m cold as I am still refusing to wear a coat since I have lived in Florida.  My hands are especially cold.  So I back down the Camry and try to jump it.  Still, a click and dead.  I have a hard time believing the battery is dead because it is only a little more than a year old.  The possibility of a dead starter flashed through my head as well.  My buddy at work had a 99 4 Runner that had the starter die.  So after f’ing around with it for a good 15-20 minutes I decided to just pull the battery out, throw it in the party van and get it tested/replaced over lunch.  Thank goodness for the party van.  I really need to pick the insurance back up on it.

Tonight I am staying late at work and depending on what gets done, working tomorrow morning as well. I am replacing our network switches.  We were running 100 megabit, I am throwing in gig switches.  It will be interesting to see how noticeable any performance increases will be.  I am a bit worried that some of the cabling we have in the building is not up to gigabit specs and could therefore cause issues.

Yesterday was a big payback day in WoW.  I normally don’t go looking for fights in game.  If I see horde in the same area, rarely will I attack them first unless I am in a really bad mood.  Yesterday I was leveling my paladin and got attacked several times.  The first time I was running into the Tanaris area, as I ran I got passed by a horde rogue on horse.  He rode by me and /wave to me, normally a sign that he has no intentions of starting crap up.  He was a level 48 and my paladin is 39 so it would be far from a fair fight.  So I am running along thinking it was nice to see a horde player acting friendly when all of a sudden I am jumped.  The same rogue that waved to me, rode ahead, went invisible and attacked me!  That mother f’r.  Luckily before he killed me I popped my shield that made be invincible for a brief time.  I managed to get close enough to town that the guards attacked the rogue and killed him.  As he was netted I shot him a quick /lol laughing at him.

Later I again was minding my own business when a horde shaman starts attacking me.  Shaman are a particularly tough class to beat and he killed me.  We fought a number of times and I managed to only kill him once and he killed me 3 or 4 times.  I was annoyed as hell.  So I brought my level 60 hunter to Tanaris to teach the shaman a lesson.  I came running up, sic’d my bear, Smoky, on him and dropped him in seconds.  Then I waited for him to resurrect and killed him again.  Then he wouldn’t resurrect because he saw me waiting to crush him again.  So I dismissed my bear and used shadowmeld to become invisible.  He rezzed and again I dropped him immediately.  I killed him 7 or 8 times total.  Hopefully he was bright enough to realize that my hunter “Deadeyeduf” was related to my paladin “Immortalduf”  I wanted to inflict a painful lesson on the dangers of unprovoked attacking.  Eventually the shaman just logged off the game, tired of dying by my hand.

Finally, there was a horde tauren warrior that was flexing his muscles killing alliance players nearly 20 levels less than him.  I tried to run over with my paladin to assist but by the time I did, he had killed the two alliance players and killed me in short order as well.  Well once again it was time to pull out Deadeye.  I log him on and go to the area of my death to find the offending horde bastard.  I unleash my bear on him and as he is getting chewed on I am raining down arrows on him.  I kill him and then wait at least 15 minutes for him to resurrect but he won’t.  Eventually I leave the area and he rez’s.  I see him again in town where guards are present.  I don’t attack him because the guards would then attack me. However I follow him around for 10 minutes doing nothing but firing off a macro that constantly spewed taunts at the guy.  It had to be driving him insane.  Eventually he cracked and tried to attack me, his aggression towards me brought the wrath of the guards down upon him.  As he was being netted and pummeled to death I just stood there and laughed at him some more.  Retribution feels damn good sometimes.

Well the physical aftermath of my volleyball experience has not been good.  Both knees are noisy and getting up from a sitting posistion results in a loud, unsettling, painful crack from my left “good” knee.  In a way I’m lucky I sucked so bad and only played 3 games else the damage would have been worse for sure.  I think when I ran my solo 2.5 mile run the week before I aggravated something in the left knee that had not healed, playing volleyball was akin to rubbin salt in the wound.  So now I am back on a holding pattern, back to not knowing if I will be able to resume what used to be normal exercise activities.  It’s frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, I don’t know why I subject myself to watching state of the union addresses.  Those are the most annoying things to witness on tv in my opinion.  Everytime I watch one, I come away feeling worse about our government than I already do.  Seeing the congress that is 90% filled with old, white codgers that fart dust just depresses me.  How can these people be a good representation of our citizens?  They just all look corrupt and decrepid.

It was funny seeing Cheyney and Nancy Pelosi in the camera angle the entire time.  Dick basically had the same miserable, disinterested look on his face for all 45 minutes.  Nancy looked more pleasant but it was funny to see her facial expressions change when Bush said things you could tell she didn’t like.  Bush spewed his normal lines of bullshit, the same bullshit we have heard for 5 years, promising change that never comes.  I thought it was odd at the end of the speech when the state of the union turned into feel good story time with W relaying stories about a military guy, the guy that jumped in front of a train to save someone and of all people Diteke Mutumbo, the basketball player.  I just didn’t understand the point of including that in the state of the union, as it has nothing to do with it.  But after story time was done, W cleared it up by saying how these three people were good examples of what America represents and I guess, somehow he is responsible for that?  What a freak show.  The stopping for applause every 15-20 seconds is truly maddening.  Glad that’s over.  Can’t wait for W to get the hell out of Dodge so we can finally start cleaning up his mess.

The pics of the pine trees we planted and the wood stork party can be seen here.

I tried to update my blog to the latest and greatest version this morning and it blew up.  I was freaking out but luckily was able to eventually unupgrade it.  What a nightmare that would have been.  I checked the support forums for the blog software and it is flooded with bug reports.  I will steer clear for awhile.

Yesterday I took the Camry to get the integrated Sirius tuner installed.  It was done in only a few hours.  It set us back a good chunk of change.  I had no idea how Sirius was added to such a fancy stereo system as what the Camry hybrid has.  However after the install, the little piece of cardboard that had the number I needed to activate the service also had the model number.  Being the nosy type I punched it in when I got home and saw the actual unit could be picked up for around 100 bucks.  I found the manual as well and it looked like it would have been in my realm of possibilities to hook it up myself, son of a bitch.  This scenario seems to happen to me too often.  I look into things in detail AFTER I pay for them.  Stupid.  Well anyway it is awesome having satellite integrated into the factory radio.  After some fumbling trying to figure out how to do stuff, I was able to figure most of it out without a manual.

Getting the radio activated was rather annoying.  I sat out in the audio stores parking lot for a good 25 minutes till I finally got it turned on.  The first two times I called I got disconnected after waiting 5 minutes.   The third time I went a different route through the automated phone menus and got a rather unprofessional black woman who sounded like she would have been more at home behind the counter of a convenience store than as a customer service rep.  I told her I called twice before to get my radio activated and got disconnected and was not very happy about it.  She said, without a hint of sympathy or remorse in her voice, “How can I help you”  I explained that I was disconnecting one radio and activating another.  She says “Wait a minute…”  I wait and wait, probably for a good 30 seconds while I hear silence on the other end.  I finally say “are you still there?”  “Yes I am having computer problems” she says in annoyed tone and again leaves me sitting there in awkward silence until her computer responds a good minute later.  She was very unprofessional the entire call and made me feel like I was somehow putting her out by asking her to perform her job.  Finally the proper switches were flipped and I was able to get more than the weather channel on the radio.  Hurray.  I said my goodbye’s to the miserable woman and turned my attention to figuring out the radio.

The only negative that I have observed with the setup is when it displays artist and song information it will not display any more than 16 characters per line so it cuts off chunks of words which is rather annoying.  When I was doing my price check I also looked into this and apparently that is just the way it is.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense why the info could not scroll like the info on standard over the airwaves radio does.  Who knows, it is a small thing, I’ll get over it.  The car now officially has everything we could possibly want in it and we paid a tidy premium for it.  Hope it lasts for 10 years.

Wow it was a tiring weekend.  Both days we got up earlier than we normally do on a work day.  On Saturday morning the reason for the early rise was to travel to Coconut Creek on the other side of Florida to play in Randall’s inaugural King of the Beach tournament.  It turns out I was the jester of the beach.

The drive over was fine although a little longer than I planned.  I allocated an hour and a half but needed closer to two hours to get there.  Ali and Nicki came along for the ride as Randall said there was a dog park right next to the courts, cool.  The park was very nice.  I walked Nicki and Ali to the dog park area and left them there so I could get ready to play. I knew everyone that was there except two guys (8 total) 

Let me get all the excuses out of the way up front.  Yea I have not played volleyball in more than 6 months.  I’m not in volleyball shape.  I have a hard time just picking up and playing well with a different partner each game and the court was BRUTALLY tough to cut your teeth on after not playing ball for so long.  It was badly bowled out so you were running up a foot high hill on each approach and the net was slightly higher than regulation. The sand was soft and deep.  It added up to an atrocious display of volleyball on my part.  I was just terrible.  Well let me be more specific, it was an atrocious display of offensive volleyball by me.

I passed ok generally, I served ok, I made some decent defensive plays.  But I could not hit the ball cleanly over the net to save my life.  In fact I don’t think I had what I would classify as one even average hit during my brief three game stint back on the courts.  I just could not do anything.  Every single time I went to hit the ball it either caught tape and rolled meekly over the net or planted itself firmly into the net, bouncing back at me in a defiant manner.  It was downright embarrassing.  I would get some great sets from these guys, approach, jump, swing hard and blast it into the net time and time again.

All three games I played in were losses with my three different partners and none of the games were even very close.  No matter how angry I got, I just could not get out of the sand.  I tried everything.  I had more costume changes than a vegas showgirl, trying various shirts and head gear combinations all ending with the same result.  Hitting is the biggest thing in volleyball I enjoy and not being able to do it at all just made for misery for me. 

Eventually Ali and Nicki came over to watch some of my last game of futility.  The format of the tourney was everyone played 3 games, then the top 4 players played 3 more, then the top two played best two out of three for the grand prize.  Well going 0-3 and looking terrible doing it ensured I would be sitting on my ass the rest of the day.  In the final matchup the top two players get to pick their partners from whomever is left.  Of course I didn’t get picked and I didn’t expect to be picked, but not being picked made me feel like the fat kid that has two left feet that is always picked last in pickup games. I remember when I played organized indoor 6’s pickup up north, I was always one of the 4 people picked to build the rest of the teams around. The idea was you wanted to have each team have at least one good player.  Now I am the shlub.

I had ideas of leaving early but everyone else stuck around so I felt obligated to do the same.  The two guys that were in the finals would not have been whom I thought would have been in the finals before play started but that is why you play the games.  So I watched the games play out like a good soldier, congratulated the eventual winner and then took off after eating a Burger King lunch that Ali went and retrieved for us.  Even though I only played three, relatively brief games, I had a full days aches and pains. The most painful thing at the time was my neck.  Cranking my head back to track sets is a movement you just don’t do in everyday life and as a result my neck was killing me.  I had other pains in my shoulders and knees as well.  The drive back was filled with me commenting on the putrid level of my play and Ali trying to build me back up.

When we got home I buried my sorrows in icing my knee and playing WoW for awhile.  During the tournament Ali made a smart ass comments to some of the guys about my WoW playing where she said all I basically do is sleep, go to work, eat supper, play wow, and go back to sleep.  I was a bit annoyed with that remark since I do manage to bust my ass around the house quite a bit, more so than Ali does I would offer.  However, I held my tongue on the way back and didn’t mention the comment until I was going to play WoW.  I asked her if she cared if I played since she made the comment earlier in the day.  She said it was fine, she just meant that it gets extreme sometimes.  Yea well there are things she does that are extreme in my viewpoint as well.  So anyway, the issue was swept under the rug with not much further squabble.

 Later that night I watched Lady in the Water, a M Knight Shamlam (sp) flick.  I always like his stuff.  This flick was weird, even for his films.  I enjoyed it but at times things were just so silly.  The best example I can give without giving away the plot was when some little kid discovers he is “The Interpreter” he magically deciphers what all the humans are supposed to do to help the lady in the water by reading it from the sides of cereal boxes.    Crazy huh?  I guess my biggest issue was how easily all the people involved accepted this far out situation of the lady in the water.  It was sorta like if I told you that you could walk on the ceiling and you said, “I can? Cool”  I found the film entertaining for the most part but for M Knight, it was a below par effort.  I give it a B, maybe a B-.

Sunday morning we had to get up even earlier, 4:30 am, in order to get to the half marathon site by 5:45 am.  I did not feel very chipper.  The night’s sleep brought me to two swollen knees as well as joint and muscle pain all over.  I gimped to the sink, took two advil and woke up Ali.  I stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the drive in to wake up a bit, it helped.

The first thing we did when we got there was work the packet pickup table where runners would come over, show us their race number and we would give them the Velcro timing device that goes around their ankle.  It was quite the hectic scene with over 1000 runners descending on a small area.  The row of at least 20 port-o-potties was impressive in a smelly way.  This race had some elite runners, many of them Kenyan.  A few of them came up while we were there.  Some did not speak good English.  Trying to explain to them what to do with the timing device was a challenge.  When the one guy realized it went around his ankle he was not happy and gestured that he wanted to put it around his wrist instead.  I’m not sure where he wound up putting it. 

Soon we had to give up our packet pickup duties and head out to the water stop we were working.  We had some problems finding it based on the verbal directions we got, however the gps saved the day.  As we pulled up we were surprised with the amount of people there, at least 20.  I had ideas of there being maybe 5 or 6 people per water stop.  It was quite the production.  They had 4 tables setup with several big 5 gallon water coolers on each one.  Then they had bags and bags of cups piled up and at least a couple dozen 5 gallon water jugs lined up in a row.  Ali and I asked what was needed. 

I got put on cup filling duty.  The lids were off the coolers and what we would do is scoop water out of them.  However you didn’t fill the cups, you wanted them to be roughly half full.  The reason being when you are handing cups to moving runners, water is going to spill, filling them all the way is a waste since the handoff would spill half of the water anyway.  It took awhile to get the feel of what a half filled cup should be but after a few minutes I was dipping and scooping water with robotic like precision.  I even drew a comment from the girl next to me about how good I was at it, yay.

  There were almost too many people helping.  We had three people scooping water out of our cooler, placing the cups on the table and even so we couldn’t keep up with the droves of other people that were taking the cups off the table and setting them by the side of the road to be handed out to runners.  We even had dedicated water pourers that would refill the coolers as the water level went down.  It was impressive how quickly we prepared at least 2500 cups of water for the runners.  Our stop was a double, meaning it got runners on the way out and the way back so we had to have a lot of water (and gatorade) ready.

The stand was at the 7 1/2 and 10 1/2 mark on the run.  The first guy came flying towards us less than 35 minutes into the race.  It was a kenyan guy and it was amazing.  Ali and I could not believe how fast this guy was running.  His stride was long and fast.  As he approached the water line, Ali was in the front and handed him water.  It was tougher to do than you can imagine.  He was running so fast that Ali said it was almost like trying to hand something to a guy driving by in a car.  In an instant he was by the water stop.  After he passed, Ali had tears in her eyes.  For some reason, just seeing someone that could run that fast made her emotional.  It was amazing to see a world class athlete running like that but I did not well up over it like she did.

The first 15 minutes or so of handing out water did not go well for me.  I just had bad technique and runners kept dropping water I attempted to hand to them.  We also learned quickly that we needed to yell out clearly if we had water or gatorade so they could get what they wanted.  Eventually as my technique improved and the speed of the runners going by lessened a bit, I was able to successfully deliver water with minimal waste.  While it was a long time to be standing out there holding out your right arm yelling time and time again “WATER, GATORADE DOWN THE LINE!”, it was surprisingly rewarding.  I could not believe how many runners were polite and courteous even in the middle of the physical pain they were enduring.  We got thanked by them time and again for volunteering as they ran by.  I was astonished.  As we handed out the drinks we all would offer words of encouragement, making eye contact and exchanging smiles that made both parties involved feel better.  Even the slowest participants got equal amounts of support from the volunteers.  It made you feel good about the entire experience.

As you were standing there you saw all sorts of people and I got to make all sorts of observations.  Early on I noticed several men that looked like they had weird stains on their chest.  It was only till much later in the race that I realized what these were.  It was blood from their nipples.  Evidently depending on the fabric of your shirt, it can rub nipples raw to the point where they bleed, ouch.  There were all sorts of people participating from the young to the old, wafer thin to the chubby.  There were many athletic, stereotypical runners whizzing by but just as many non-athletic people whom just had determination to finish on their side.  It made me regret not being able to be part of the event from a runner’s perspective.

  There were lots of people that ran/walked the event which is what Ali would probably wind up doing. She didn’t sign up because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to finish in the supposed 2:45 time limit.  However the last person crossed the line more than 3:15 from the start so Ali definitely would have been able to do it.  My issue would be I just would not be satisfied if I stopped to walk at all.  I would force myself to continue running until I more or less dropped or ground my knees into dust, I just know I would.   But man that would be a feather in the cap.  We got done earlier than I thought and thanks to all the hands, everything was pretty much cleaned up and ready to pack up by 10:30.  It turns out we had more refreshments than we needed as several hundred cups got poured into the gutter.  Ali and I pulled out for home, both very satisfied with our experience, even with the getting up at 4:30 am part. It was inspirational to see person after person battling through their own personal limits to complete a feat of extreme endurance.

By the time we got home the advil had worn off and I was feeling quite beat up.  However I had a  list of things I had to get done before licking my wounds for the rest of the day.  We have had no rain this week again so I had to drag 240 feet of hose around the house to water everything.  The entire time I was thinking how nice it will be to not have to do this shit anymore.  After watering I filled the bird feeders, picked some ripe tomatoes from our garden and then moved inside to do the weekly counter cleaning/floor sweeping routine.  During that time we noticed we had a huge gathering of wood storks in our backyard, at least twenty.  They just stood around back there for a long time.  I took a few pictures of them and the pine trees I planted.  I’ll post them later.

From about 3 o’clock on I was just watching football.  Both teams I wanted to win, won. I was so beat though I only stayed awake until a little after 9, so I didn’t find out the Colts won till this morning.  This mornin Buttons the diabetic cat came into the bathroom for her morning “drippies”  Drippies are what she gets after I wash my hair in the morning.  She walks around me and meows constantly while I let the excess water from my hair drip all over her.  Anyway, she comes in this morning and her back is coated in pine needles from the Christmas tree.  Evidently she walked right under the branches and got dumped on.  This is the last week for the tree, too bad, I was hoping it would make it to February.

Tomorrow I am going over to Cocunut Creek to play in a King of the Beach format tournament.  Randall is putting it together.  It actually is a very good idea.  We only have 8 people playing and each one of us chips in 25 bucks.  Since there is no overhead, all the money goes back out and the person that finishes first will pocket 125 bucks with good payouts for 2nd and third too.  It should be cool.  I have zero expectations.  I have literally not touched a volleyball since I limped off the muddy field in Pottstown in late June.  In the past, I have actually done half decent after long layoffs.  However this is going to be very different.  In King of the Beach format, you rotate partners each game so you are playing with someone different.  With my quirky style and intense dislike of playing the right side, I expect to struggle.  I am not the easiest guy for someone to just pick up and play with.  I expect it to be fun, I know about half the guys that are playing pretty well.

I’m really getting the itch to move forward with the sprinkler project.  The next thing I need to do is draw everything out and gulp, plan it.  As much as I hate drawing stuff up, it is necessary if I want the sprinkler system to work properly.  I am envisioning the day when I have it all in place and looking out across the landscape with pride as things get watered without me pulling a damn house around for an hour and a half.

On Sunday, Ali and I are getting up at the crack of dawn to help with the Naples Half Marathon.  I have spent the last 6 months or so maintaining the web site for the race as well as a spreadsheet with all of the entries.  When I turned the data over we had about 1500 runners, a huge race.  It should be a cool experience watching it unfold.  We had ideas of actually running the race 8 months ago but the reality is neither Ali’s or my knees would hold up to that kind of pounding.

America has transformed into the land of the fat asses and nowhere was it more apparent than American Idol.  You have these big fat women (and men) coming on with double or triple chins and huge guts wanting to be a pop music star.  It’s laughable.  People are so damn lazy when it comes to personal health discipline, it really sickens me.  The ironic thing is nowadays calling out a fat ass as a fat ass is almost akin to a racial slur.  Some perverse element in society wants us all to believe that being shaped like the michelin man is just fine.  It’s the person INSIDE that matters.  I love that mentality, enabling your fatness by hiding behind idealisms.