Archives October 2008

So last night on the way home from the runners club meeting I had to get gas.  After filling up I exited the station and attempted a left turn where you weren’t technically supposed to do one.  Well as I was navigating the truck through the narrow space AGAIN the truck bounces and stops abruptly.  I can feel that the right front tire dropped a bit into what I can only assume was a drainage inlet on the curb. DAMN IT.  So I throw it in reverse and manage to yank myself out of it with minimal wheel spinning.  I curse myself as I am driving home about my recent driving f ups. Well this morning when I went out to get in the truck for work I saw the extent of the damage.  Not only did the sidewall have a big streak of white on it, there also was a chunk of rubber missing from the sidewall as well as some damage to the rim of the wheel.  It is going to require me to get the tire replaced.  A weakened sidewall is nothing to screw with.  I am hoping that the road hazard protection I bought with the tires will cover at least some of the cost.  I’m not happy.

We got home just in time to watch the debate.  It seemed like a lot of more of the same to me although I have heard some say they thought it was McCain’s best performance of the three which isn’t saying much in my opinion.  This time around instead of “My friends”, “Joe the Plumber” took center stage for McCain. McCain told the story of how poor Joe wants to buy the plumbing business he has worked for and since the business makes more than $250,000 he could pay more taxes under Obama’s plan, wahhhhhhh! I really feel bad for the guy.  Cut me a break.  McCain threw this guy’s name out so many times it was embarrassing.  The fact is the VAST majority of small business owners don’t make what “Joe” would, does it make sense to accommodate 5% or 95% of small business?  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out.  Poor Joe, poor quarter of a million dollars per year Joe….

Anyway I don’t think the debate will do much to change people’s perspective either way.  It actually has gotten to the point where it is frustrating to watch.  The same scenario keeps getting repeated time and time again.  McCain throws out a truck load of accusations, untruths and unadulterated bullshit and then Obama calmly and logically explains and debunks it and then McCain repeats it again, acting like he is deaf. I’m glad the debates are over.

I totally forgot the Phillies were on last night, I thought they played tonight.  I woke up surprised and excited to see they took out the Dodgers easily and will be advancing to the World Series for the first time in 15 years when they lost to the Blue Jays.  It would be awesome if the Phils could break Philadelphia’s 25 year drought in championships in any major sport.  They may have the guns to do it.

A guy I know at the gym is a Naples police officer.  He is a no nonsense guy with a dry sense of humor.  Well we were talking about the recent cases of “skimmers” in our area.  Skimmers are little devices thieves put inside ATM and gas pump slots to read people’s credit card information.  Well he told me that he recently went to a gas station and was pumping gas.  As he was pumping he noticed there was an additional swipe on his pump, sitting low.  He looked around at the other pumps and none of them had this low swipe.  He was sure he discovered a skimmer.  So he grabs on to the potential skimmer, expecting it to pull off easily.  It doesn’t give at first.  He pulls a bit harder, it still isn’t moving.  Well this guy is strong as an ox.  He puts some force into and pulls again.  This time the reader comes loose as well as the entire front of the gas pump!  The cop is befuddled about how the skimmer could be so strongly attached.  He goes in and talks to the attendant inside.  He explains how there appeared to be a suspicious, low credit card scanner on the one pump without mention that he basically just destroyed the pump trying to remove it.  The attendant pauses and says to him “That is for handicap people…”  The cop left without another word.

I spent a good part of the day yesterday f’ing around with XP SP3.  The damn thing just would not install.  Each time I attempted the install it would get most of the way through before an “Access Denied” error would pop up.  A quick search on the web revealed this problem is rather common unfortunately.  It normally has to do with a virus protection program locking the registry from changes the service pack wants to do.  Ok no problem, I’ll disable vp.

So I disable Symantec Endpoint protection as well as Spy Sweeper and try the upgrade again, same thing. I do more research and find some script that supposedly resets the registry and a bunch of files back to their default permissions.  This script takes FOREVER to run but I patiently wait for it to complete.  It finally does and I again attempt the install.  Keep in mind each install and failure takes a loooooong time.  There is some MSFT process called fixccs.exe that just spins it’s wheels forever during the install.  After the install fails there is a lengthy rollback process followed by a reboot.  After going through this process at least a half dozen times I was almost out of patience.  So I decided to get extreme my last attempt and instead of disabling my virus protection, I would uninstall it completely.  After doing this I started the upgrade again before leaving for home.

So I came in today to find the upgrade completed, imagine that.  It didn’t take long for me to notice that another post upgrade problem I read about, a blank Device Manager and Network Connections box had now taken center stage.  Microsoft has a hot fix for this problem although I don’t quite understand why it isn’t rolled into the current version of SP3.  I download it, run it and it just spins and spins.  I kill it after waiting a long time with nothing evidently happening.  I do so more research and read the fine print that says it has to be run from Safe Mode, duh. 

So I reboot, run the utility and it completes in a few seconds.  I restart once again and all apparently is well once again.  In total I bet I spent a good 8 hours screwing with the damn thing.   I think it is pretty ridiculous that MSFT would release a service pack without testing how it would interact with something as common as AV software, especially from an industry giant like Symantec.  Hopefully nothing else blows up.

So last night after work Ali gave me the blessing to go get my Iphone.   I wanted the 16 gig model for the extra storage room.  I called during the afternoon to the store I visited before.  They said they had one in stock but they couldn’t hold it until after 5 so I would have to just stop and see if it is there.  They also told me they had moved to a new shopping center.

So I shoot out of work and head to the store.  I knew the general area the new store was in but not exactly.  So I am driving around the shopping center, slowly, looking for the ATT logo.  I am heading out towards an exit and look off to my left and see an ATT branded truck so I immediately swing the wheel left.  The second I do I am rocked violently in the truck as I PLOW over the median.  Evidently with all of my head turning, I hadn’t noticed that a median had started leading out to the exit.  I was afraid I really f’d up the truck but after I parked, got out and did a visible survey, everything at least LOOKED ok. What a dumb ass.

So I walk in the door and ask if they still have the 16 gig phone.  The woman goes in the back and checks.  She comes out and tells me it is gone. SON OF A BITCH.  She tells me more may come in tomorrow and if they do she will call me. Ok, fine.  Well at first I was just going to accept the disappointment and head home, however I changed my mind on the drive up.  I hopped on the web on my Treo and found the numbers for other local ATT stores and started calling around.  Doing this took forever on the Treo, the Blazer browser and slow network speed makes browsing enough of a chore that many times I prefer to just not even bother with trying to do it on that phone.  After a few calls I find a store that has several in stock, sweet.  The only bad part was the store was 15 miles back towards town, oh well, I was on a mission now.

I get to the store and ask for Ashley, the girl I spoke to on the phone.  There were no other customers in the store, just me, Ashley and another clerk named Collin.  She seemed nice enough.  I explained to her the basics of what I wanted to do which was to add the Iphone to Ali’s Treo 750 on their family plan as well as utilizing my county employee discount and transferring my number over from Sprint to the Iphone.  I thought it may be a hassle trying to get everything straight that I wanted but Ashley made it seem like no big deal.  Then she actually tried to do it.

Well evidently there was some sort of snafu with getting the Sprint number ported over.  She was on the phone with the mother ship forever.  At first I was patient.  I started getting annoyed as I stood there and Ashley was on her personal cell phone first talking to her boyfriend and then repeatedly texting to others. It was just rude IMO.  I stood around for a good 45 minutes until the process was over.  Towards the end I asked for details about what the issue was as well as asking if this normally took this long.  She said it normally is very fast, I guess it was just my lucky day.  Finally the transfer was done and I walked out of there around 7.  With the family plan, we will wind up paying about the same or slightly less then we were with phones on the different carriers.

When I got home I got to play with the Iphone for a bit.  It took me the longest time to figure out how to do something as simple as dump music to it.  “Manage my music manually” is the magic setting you need.  I already knew how much of it worked from my Ipod Touch.  I’ll be tweaking it out slowly as free time allows. 

Sir Randall asked me my opinion about Heroes this season.  The short answer is “I still like it”, although there is a large BUT.  One of my biggest complaints about Heroes besides the RIDICULOUS amount of commercials they wedge into the show, is the vast amount of characters they have in the show.  Well this year they have expanded the cast of heroes (and villains) exponentially.  It is downright crazy, I bet we have been introduced to no less than 25 people with super powers at this point.  Throw on top of it the plot that constantly is shifting between present day and the future and the characters being flip flopped between good and evil roles, it just adds up to a jumbled mess.  Like I said, I enjoy the show but I’ll be very surprised if it survives past this season.  Tim Kring just has way too much going on in a show that has 30 some minutes of actual content.

I did my first 300 yesterday in 18 days. It was ROUGH.  Maintaining HOH was very difficult.  I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to take a knee or lean on something.

When we were on vacation I heard Chris Matthews use the term “lightly informed” to describe people that have their political ideas molded by things as simple as a candidates middle name.  It is much more polite than referring to them as “idiots”, “dumb asses” or “ignorant” as I have often done.  So I am going to make an effort to refer to such individuals as “lightly informed” from now on, I like the term.

I got this email forward with these HILARIOUS ads from the 30’s.  Check a few of them out.   Why didn’t I think of tapeworms for weight loss??? Girls, remember to use your Lysol!

I’m not going to be very verbose.

So to pick up where I left off.  On Thursday morning it looked like we might be washed out once again as it was raining hard while I was at the fitness center. Luckily the bad weather broke and we were able to do the two things I hoped, hiking the gorge and playing miniature golf.

This time we hit the south rim of the gorge.  The nearly two days of rain changed the personality of the river running through it.  There was a lot more water and it was flowing at a much faster pace.  Originally I had ideas of getting the permit to climb all the way down to the bottom.  However when we entered the park there was a sign posted that access to the gorge floor was not allowed because of all of the water, bummer.

To get to the south rim trail we had to traverse part of the north rim trail we had hiked before.  The south side had a different feel to it.  Much of the trail was up high in the open as opposed to the north rim where most of your time was spent under the trees.  Evidently the south trail was destroyed in the early 90’s from a tornado and they rebuilt several years afterward.  When we got to the steps leading down to the suspension bridge from the south I HAD to complete them just like I did from the north side.  The north staircase was a total of 610 steps, the south path had even more steps, close to 700 total (350 up and back)  It was not an easy descent and a very challenging climb.  Along the way I passed several groups of people that bit off more than they could chew and were recuperating mid-climb.  I paused at several of the landings on the way back up, but only briefly.  I observed the HOH method and did not touch the railing at all on the way up or down.  By the time I rejoined Nicki and Ali at the top my legs were burning and wobbly.

We had a good time along the way hiking the rest of the trail.  A few times along the way I found a good resting spot for the camera that allowed me to take a few group shots with the timer.  If you are ever in northern Georgia, I highly recommend visiting the Tallulah Gorge.

Later that afternoon, part two of the plan came together as we played a round of miniature golf.  We were the only ones playing so having Nicki wandering around the holes did not pose a problem.  Nicki discovered a fun game.  After we would putt she would run after the golf ball, pick it up and walk off with it.  It was cute at first, it started to annoy me eventually.  We had a close game, I only won by two or three strokes.  I failed to mention my dominance in frisbee golf where I scored a 70 versus Ali’s 101, thank you very much.

If you can believe it or not, we went the entire week without eating out once.  I bought a bunch of stuff at the grocery store that kept us fed.  We had planned to go out at least once but the way the bad weather unfolded, it squashed those plans since our only option would be outdoor dining with the pooch.

Thursday evening we got most of everything packed up for the long 11 hour drive home Friday.  Unfortunately Thursday night was my worst night sleep wise.  Part of the cheap construction of the units was very squeaky floorboards in the unit above us.  The people that were staying there had an annoying habit of walking around every night between 3 and 4 am.  Well unlike the rest of the week where I could fall back asleep after hearing the loud noise, this time I couldn’t.  It probably was the anticipation of the trip home.

We left at a reasonable time, 8 am.  Ali and I both agreed that the perks far outweighed the little annoyances we ran into.  We would definitely come back. Ali said it was the first trip she could remember in a long time where she wasn’t chomping at the bit to get back home.

The drive back went just fine, no big trouble.  The Camry proved to be a very comfortable cruiser, at least for me.  Yea it would be nice to have a bed in the back to lay down on but saving a few hundred on gas eased the pain.  On the way back I averaged over 37 mpg while driving 75-80 mph most of the way, impressive.

We got home around 7 pm.  After unloading the car we ate pizza and caught up on some of the shows that were backed up on Tivo.  Neither of us were particularly looking forward to unpacking.  Friday was our actual anniversary, it’s too bad that it was probably the least enjoyable of the vacation since it was basically just driving.

On Saturday we wasted no time getting sucked back into the abyss of home maintenance.  I told Ali I wanted to do the tractor mowing so I could avoid having to weed whack due to my aching right forearm/elbow (I get a bit closer to things when I mow).  I immediately missed the cool temperatures and low humidity of the Georgia mountains as I was sweating within minutes of being outside.

So I hopped on the mower and had at it.  As I was mowing I started smelling an increasingly strong smell of burning rubber.  Eventually I stopped and took a look down at the deck.  The one belt was smoking a bit from being that hot.  It appeared that the heat was coming from the middle pulley.  I touched the belt and it was burning up, great.  So I dig around under there, cleaning out grass that was wedged around the pulley and manually rotating the blades to see if I felt any unusual resistance which I didn’t.  So I fire the mower back up and cut some more but it doesn’t take long until things smell hot again so I drive the mower up to the garage to pull the mower deck off.

After I pulled the deck out I had to pour water on the center pulley before working on it.  The water instantly evaporated as it hit the metal, it was that hot.  I remove the pulley from the deck and check it out.  It spins freely enough although I could feel that there was some junk in the bearings.  It may just be wearing out.  I took some axle grease and gooped up the bearings.  I put everything back together and was able to finish mowing with out smelling burning rubber.  I’ll have to keep an eye on it.

We had a bunch of seedlings that were ready to go in the garden.  The thing is I still needed more dirt for it.  So I was off to Home Depot to grab 20 bags of dirt and 20 bags of mulch.  The truck was so loaded down that I had to throw three bags of dirt in the cab.  I had three people comment on how much work I had in front of me as I pushed the flat bed loaded to the hilt up to the register. They were right.

Once I got home I immediately started on ripping, dumping and raking the bags of dirt.  Once the dirt was in place Ali was assigned transplanting duty.  She put a bunch of corn, beets and carrot plants in the dirt. I turned my attention to the mulch.  I have almost all of our landscaped beds re-mulched besides the back border of the pool cage.

Later that night I took my sprayer I bought for bleach and used a mixture of water and liquid pool chlorine to spray various areas of the pool cage that were turning green from all of the moisture.  It worked surprisingly well.  The mildew was gone in no time.  I felt bad when I inadvertently sprayed a few frogs with the potent mixture.  They jumped away, hopefully to wipe the chlorine off in the grass.  I felt like a shithead.

Sunday morning I busted ass sweeping the house, doing laundry and running the carpet steamer.  I just wanted a clean floor. 

The Eagles game was a roller coaster.  They started out looking like they would dominate, then they fell flat on their face and allowed 20 unanswered points.  All of a sudden they started playing well and making some big plays.  It was a good thing they did.  Losing that game going into a bye week would have been pretty damn miserable.  There were a TON of last second finishes yesterday. 

On top of the big Eagles win my fantasy team kicked major ass, once again I should have the top point total for the week.  I made some shrewd moves picking up Correl Buckhalter and Steve Breaston, they both came up big for me yesterday.  Even the Cowboys played perfectly.  Tony Romo and Marion Barber scored me big fantasy points while the team lost, a win/win for me.

The Phillies looked over matched last night, well at least Jamie Moyer did.  I have no idea how he won 16 games this year, his stuff looks to be BP level at best.  I can’t believe he is 45 and still pitching.  Being a big left handed pitcher is a blessing, a big part of the reason scouts were interested in me.  I still think the Phils are in good shape to take the series.  The first two games were great. I’ll be watching tonight.

A picture says a 1000 words, right?

https://blog.duf.net/ali/subpages/Georgia%202008/index.html

Yesterday it rained ALL DAY.  It was a very cold rain, the type that made you want to huddle in front of a fireplace after being out in it.  A lot of our day was spent in the room just hanging out, watching movies and reading.  We decided to venture out into the slop during the afternoon to check out the near by towns of Helen and Cleveland.

Helen had a German look to it and they were actually in the middle of their Oktoberfest celebration.  It had a very touristy feel to it.  With the rain we didn’t see any more of it than what was visible out the car window.  Cleveland seemed like many small towns we have in Pennsylvania.  It’s only claim to fame is some Cabbage Patch Kid Museum thing.

As we drive the area it seems that the biggest natural resource is churches.  Churches are EVERYWHERE.  Ali also observed that since we have been here, 5 days now, we have not seen a single police car.  It’s a stark contrast to Naples where you literally can not drive more than 5 minutes without seeing a deputy vehicle.

Today is our last full day here.  We hope to get back out to the gorge to hike the other rim.  Unfortunately the weather is not cooperating so far, it’s still raining.  Hopefully it clears a bit.  If we get to hike and play on the mini-golf course here at the resort my day will be complete.

I’ve been hitting the fitness center each morning for quick workouts.  Even though their equipment is not great it’s better than nothing.  Yesterday I was on rep 1 of an attempted set of lat rows and I got a nasty pain across my left elbow to match with the tendinitis I have been feeling in the right one.  Then last night I got Nicki riled up and she started running around the room.  I was standing to the side of the bedroom doorway when she came barreling back towards me.  Instead of running to my left, where there was lots of space, she tried to wedge to my right where there was none.  As a result she plowed into my right knee at full speed.  I was sure she f’d up my knee seriously but after icing the knee, as the night went on the symptoms weren’t bad.  I was lucky. 

I just watched a P90X infomercial.  It inspired me to get back down to the fitness room and do some unconventional, intense exercise.  Yeehaw.

How many times did McCain utter those two words?  Unreal.  I thought once again Obama stiff armed McCain’s weak attacks brilliantly.  I won’t even go into some of the odd and bizarre things McCain did and said like proposing a second bail out and referring to Obama with an evil grin as “that one…”  McCain is desperate and it is making him lose all credibility.

We got to play frisbee golf yesterday.  It was fun although I could have done without all of the holes that cut through the middle of a forest.  We relaxed, read and even took a nap yesterday afternoon.  It was very laid back.

Today there is a steady, cold rain coming down.  I’m not sure what the day will hold.

Over and out.

Quick recap:

700 miles – 11 hours in the car.  The Camry was quite comfortable for the long drive.  I only started to get a bit rutchy in the seat the last hour or two.  Averaged about 35 mpg, a 300% improvement over party van gas mileage.

The timeshare is very quiet and very quaint.  The buildings are cheaply constructed but they tried to make up for it by furnishing the interiors nicely.  The staff is very friendly and there is lots to do that costs absolutely nothing extra.

Yesterday we went to Tallulah Falls, home  of the deepest gorge in the eastern United States.  The Great Wallenda crossed this gorge on a high wire in 1970.  Ali, Nicki and I walked the North Rim trails.  I made the 600 odd step round trip down towards the bottom of the gorge to a suspension bridge.  It was a great hike.  We may go back later  in the week to hike the South Rim trails.

Went to the town of Clarkesville to get groceries at a place called “Ingles”  When I saw on the front of it in big letters “AN AMERICANN OWNED COMPANY”  I thought the name was a slap at Mexicans, as in “No hablas INGLES”  However once I got inside I heard the name pronounced as Ingles as in Chris Cringle.

Our days have been relaxed.  Yea I have used the fitness center that has as much broken equipment as functional stuff.  We have had plenty of time to read and just hang. 

We are both looking forward to watching the debate tonight, especially since McCain  has resorted to absolute gutter politics at this point, throwing out a non-stop, personal, negative, deceptive attacks against Obama during the past few days.  It’s disappointing McCain has sunk to this level, especially when you watch the video in April of him proclaiming how he absolutely was going to run a positive campaign.  It makes me lose a lot of respect for him.  It almost seems like he has sold his soul to the devil (lobbyists) in order to try to get elected. He can’t win on a discussion of issues so he has resorted to fear and lies.

Oh well time to get back to relaxing.  We’ll see what today brings us.  I am getting an urge to play a round on the frisbee golf course they have on the grounds.

I haven’t mentioned the Phillies and their NL East title accompanied by winning their first 2 playoff games, the first playoff games they have won in 15 years.  Too bad the games have been played mid-afternoon, I haven’t seen a single pitch. For the first time since the early 80’s, all four of Philly’s major sports teams are competitive at the same time.  Go Phillies!

I started my winter running program today with a leisurely 2 miles run at 1% incline on the treadmill.  My body wasn’t used to being asked to maintain 20 straight minutes of running but overall I didn’t feel bad at all.  I am hoping to run the bridge race in Fort Myers in November.  That is the first race Ali and I ever ran together three or four years ago.  I believe the last race I ran was the Diarrhea 5k last March.

Last night when I was taking Nicki out I saw two wolf spiders right outside the lanai door.  One moved out of the way, the other one stayed put.  The one that stayed looked a bit weird, it’s ass end was big.  I used my foot to try to bump the spider so it would run away.  It didn’t move but instead I saw hundreds of tiny little spiders scatter in all directions and then return back to the spider in a few seconds.  Then I realized this was a female wolf spider. 

I knew that females carried the baby spiders on their abdomen but I never had seen one before.  It was bizarre.  I called Ali out to show her.  She was freaked out by it.  The mama spider had no intentions of moving for whatever reason.

So Ali and I sat down and watched the VP debate last night.  It went pretty much as I expected.  Palin stuck strictly to her notes.  She was unable to speak off the cuff intelligently about any subject.  She would read her notes and then if Biden offered up a response to her statement that wasn’t covered in her notes she simply let it pass and said nothing further.  Biden did a great job of dismantling any angle that Palin attempted to read.  He didn’t focus on her ineptitude, instead he focused on McCain and his disingenuous representation of both his current positions and his track record over the last 8 years of being almost joined at the hip with Bush in most areas.  

Palin got the word “maverick” out 8 or 9 times and peppered in lots of winks, bad grammar and “joe six pack” speak.  Like McCain, her mission was to make the public think that the last 8 years have not occurred.  She accused Biden of looking backwards instead of forward.  I guess her message is to not learn from past mistakes when you can have a future full of new f up’s by following basically the same policies.

I loved Biden’s remarks near the end where he spelled out that John McCain’s record indicates he is anything but a maverick on issues that are the largest in this election.  He really laid out exactly what McCain’s shortcomings were.  He also did a good job with getting into SPECIFICS of what would be done in regards to the issues presented where as Palin did nothing but talk in vague generalities filled with buzz words and nothing else.

He spanked her plain and simple but everyone expected that.  I had to chuckle when I saw people say Palin did “better than expected”.  I guess when the bar is low it isn’t too hard to jump over it.  Because she didn’t sit there and stare into the camera blankly she did a good job?  All Palin did was read what was fed to her like she was told to.  The woman is so under qualified for the position it is ludicrous. 

Several times during the debate I thought Ali was going to jump up and strangle Palin through the TV after she made contradictory statement after contradictory statement.  I had to cover my eyes several times while Sarah was speaking, I felt embarrassed for her.     

Sarah Palin may be a nice woman to drink beer with, but she SUCKS as a vice presidential candidate, plain and simple.