Archives December 2008

OK as always, let’s review my 2008 goals.

Get the kitchen counters replaced – nope.  This is getting ridiculous.  It has been a goal for 3 years. It WILL get done in 2009.

New pool drains, fencing, hdtv, pool cleaner – check, check, check and check and then some. We actually knocked out almost the entire wish list which I didn’t expect to do.

Personal goals, retain fitness level – yes.  I continued my 300 work out deep into 2008, at one point even completing the once impossible 1500!  Nagging injuries in the last few months however has sidelined me from the 300 as well as much of my regular work out routine. Current weight hovers between 175 -180 pounds.

Jumping out of a plane – another goal that has been sitting on the list for entirely too long.

Be happier – For most of the year (and most of my life) I did a pretty poor job of this.  In recent months I have been taking active measures to try to correct this.  Most days I feel pretty good.  I still have a few gray ones.

Ok so all in all I did a decent job of hitting goals. Let’s talk about the highlights of the year.

Home projects were once again big on the list and I did a bunch of them  in 2008 after a year or so break.  Fencing in the back yard was the biggest project of the year.  It was not as technical or precise of a job as installing the sprinkler system but it required more back breaking work.  Even though it was completed in March, I still look out upon the fence line with pride 9 months later.  The project gave birth to new freedom for Nicki.  She LOVES being able to have a couple acres to roam free on.

Most of the other projects were minor.  Replacing the landscape borders was probably next on the list as far as amount of work goes.  Expanding the garden area also was  a welcomed addition.  We actually are reaping a bountiful harvest from some of our crops.  I expect that to increase dramatically in 2009 as we further tweak our set up. 

The most surprising list item to be accomplished in 2008 was getting a HDTV.  Not just only a HDTV, a MONSTER 73 inch HDTV! It is in a word, nirvana.  I never knew what all the commotion was about HDTV. Well now I know.  I am very grateful to Ali for letting me get the unit.  An added bonus was being able to give our old 61″ Sony to mom.  After some initial hesitation, she LOVES having a big screen in her condo as well.

Getting the HDTV also necessitated getting several other things like a HDTV Tivo and HD Satellite so I could watch my Eagles games in HD.  Football in HD is spectacular.

I hoped to have the rest of the inside of the house painted in 08 but we only managed to knock out the office.  I am thinking about paying someone to paint the main living area while we handle the remaining bedrooms and bathrooms. 

The other list items were mostly purchasing a few items that were needed for the house.  One of the cheapest but most welcomed was new pool drains.  After searching for a couple years I FINALLY found drains that prevent the pool cleaner from getting stuck on them.  This, combined with my rediscovery of the benefits of using liquid chlorine instead of granulated stuff for pool upkeep has dramatically reduced the amount of pool maintenance I must perform weekly.  It’s been like night and day.

We had two major trips in 2008.  In June we traveled back up to PA for the Rumble.  When I last played the Rumble in those miserable, rainy, muddy conditions in 2006 I doubted that I would ever return.  My knees were so torched after that debacle.  Despite astronomical gas prices that resulted in us spending $700-$800 in gas alone, we took the party van up so we could bring Nicki with.  The trip was a lot of fun.  The only thing that wasn’t so fun was our play at the Rumble which was subpar at best.  Even so, I was very happy to just be able to play and having Randall make the 1200 mile trip up north to play with me was very cool and appreciated. During the trip I also got to take in my first Phillies game at the new stadium.  Hell it was my first Phillies game I had seen in person in probably 20 years.  It was a beautiful park and a great time.

Our other journey was to northeast Georgia for our anniversary.  We stayed at a timeshare that was located in the middle of the mountains. It was probably the most laid back week I have had in a long time.  We did a ton of relaxing as well as seeing the local sights.  We hiked along the Tallulah Gorge twice with Nicki. That was a ton of fun.  During the entire week we didn’t go out to eat a single time and it didn’t matter one bit.  We just enjoyed having very little to do.  It was an unconventional but surprisingly enjoyable way to spend our 10 year anniversary.

Another big moment came in October when both my sister and her family and my brother and my niece came down at the same time.  Sis and crew stayed at mom’s place, Todd and Caroline shacked up with us.  Our entire family has not been together in Florida at the same time ever.   Even though there were the expected little bumps in the road it was very special to have everyone there.  We had A LOT of fun. 

An unexpected bonus was my brother-in-laws willingness to help me swap out the front door.  He builds houses for a living so I couldn’t imagine anyone more qualified to help.  He took the bull by the horns and did almost all of the work himself.  As a result we now have a front door that matches the house, doesn’t leak and looks good, unlike the old piece of shit door it replaced. Todd jumped in and helped quite a bit on that project as well.

During the visit I was able to get to know my nieces a whole lot better.  Caroline, my brother’s daughter was extremely shy and would hardly say a word to me when she arrived.  The day she left we were out back playing wiffle ball together and later she had fun as I would throw her onto stack of pillows on the bed again and again and again.  My other niece, Emily took an unexpected attraction to me.  She wanted me to hold her constantly.  The last night we saw them she screamed bloody murder as we left because I had to put her down.  She is adorable. Their visit made me wish we could all get together on an annual basis.  Too bad logistics and expense make that rather difficult.

The Wii finally made it into our household in 2008.  I remember when it first came out I thought it was just a fad.  I was sure that since most people are lazy by nature, the idea of having to get off the couch and move around to play a video game would get old very quickly.  Boy was I wrong.  The Wii opened up a whole new genre of games.  Even though many of the games are graphically inferior compared to titles available on other systems, the playability and interactivity is hard to beat.  The recent addition of Wii Fit to my collection just further expands on that concept and can actually make working out fun.  All you need to know about Wii is this.  My mom NEVER played a video game in her life with me.  She plays on the Wii and likes it.

My other main video game entertainment is STILL WoW.  It’s very casual instead of a compulsion but I still find it a very enjoyable way to spend my allocated gaming hours.

The Phillies were the big sports story of the year.  It actually got me watching and caring about baseball for the first time in years.  They managed to break a quarter of a century drought in sports championships for Philadelphia and boy did the fans appreciate it.  Now if only the Eagles could follow suit.

Speaking of fitness, my 2008 was up and down in that regard.  Yea I have stayed in shape but it has been increasingly difficult to do so.  I have run several races this year but there still seems to be a random nature to if I will get hurt doing so.  I can get on a running kick for awhile and then out of the blue a pain will flare up out of nowhere in one of my knees that shuts me back down.  I played in three volleyball tournaments this past year, including a return to the Rumble.  Hell we even won a tournament.  However I still had a similar situation, lots of aches and pains.  My left shoulder seems to be permanently tweaked and again my knee condition is always a question mark.

However surprisingly my knees were not my biggest pain in the ass of 2008.  Instead tennis elbow (tendonitis) has taken that title.  It is something that developed slowly over time.  I kept trying to work through it, figuring it would heal on it’s own.  Instead the symptoms just got worse.  I had to stop doing 300’s and pretty much any exercise that involved pulling and/or gripping.  I think it is slowly improving but I need to really be careful.  I also recently developed odd pain in the heel of my left hand.  It feels like it is deeply bruised but there is no discoloration to indicate that.  It makes pushing exercises a challenge as well.

I basically have just been experiencing what I have been told for many years.  As you age you just start breaking down.  Handling the break downs in an intelligent manner that allows you to heal and get back on track is the challenging part.  Ignoring pain and pushing through it as I have done in the past is a recipe for disaster at 41.

Ali and I took on another big project in 2008, getting a new electronic timing system implemented for our running club.  Basically the club entrusted me with researching, buying, configuring and running a chip timing system.  It has been challenging, rewarding and frustrating at the same time.  After making the purchase, the Tennessee based distributor that we bought the French made system from stopped being a distributor.  That move meant that we had to deal directly with France for any problems.  Any attempts I have made to do so have been extremely frustrating and unproductive.  The system works pretty well most of the time but it’s not as bullet proof as I think it needs to be.  I’d like to move to a different vendor and hardware if we can in the future.

That being said, the system has made life much better for both the runners participating in our races as well as for us after the race.  Race participants can now start getting results from the race while the race is still going on.  We no longer have to deal with the antique card based system that left so much room for human error.  The chip system also makes it extremely easy to post results on the web site after the race.  Before Ali would manually have to type in each and every runners name and finishing time into an Excel spreadsheet.  Now I press a few buttons and the process is done in minutes.

I also grabbed the horns with redoing the clubs web site which had not been updated for a half decade or more.  I found a cool flash template that I modified to fit our needs.  The feedback I have gotten for the update has been all positive. 

It’s funny just how deeply involved Ali and I have become in the running club, especially since neither of us are exactly hard core runners.  Evidently the combination of Ali’s organization skills and my technical know how were two big holes that needed to be filled.  Now we both are a crucial part of the race operations.

I’ve had some other technical challenges this year like dealing with IX Web Hosting and the results of their security holes that allowed my site to get hacked repeatedly throughout the year.  I also recently replaced my home network server, router and switch hardware.

On a sad note, we had Buttons put to sleep in 2008.  She had suffered from diabetes for 8 years.  Her up and down health situation and the excrement associated with it was the cause of much stress and anger for me over the years.  Even so, when we were in the vet office and the injection was administered it was one of the saddest moments of my life.  I still sometimes find myself looking down for her after I wash my hair in the morning so that I could drip water on her like she always liked.  It bums me out.

Politics really dominated my blog for a lot of 2008.  I felt strongly about the presidential race and expressed those feelings repeatedly here.  My doing so ruffled some feathers along the way, including in my own family which I regret.  Things have been smoothed out since then.  Of course I am very happy with the way things turned out.  I am very hopeful that Obama is going to turn out to be a very special president and not just another wind bag full of empty promises.  I sincerely believe he has the attitude, personality and the tools to actually get stuff done. Let’s hope for all of our sakes he does.

Ok that is enough of an 08 recap, let’s talk about 2009 goals.

The two big carryover goals need to get addressed, replacing the counters and jumping out of a plane.  I have nearly $500 in gift cards to kick start the counter installation process.

I’d like to get the rest of the interior of the house painted.  Painting the exterior of the house with the elastic paint that helps hide hairline cracks would be awesome as well.  I wish I didn’t dislike painting as much as I do.

Of course I want to remain vigilant with my fitness routines.  I need to get the tendonitis under control.  I want to return to my bi-weekly 300 routine as well as try to keep running and volleyball in my activity lists as long as I am physically able to do so. Wii Fit should continue to be a nice supplement to my fitness goals.

Happiness is a constant goal that I will continue to work on.  I now realize that I don’t have to be a helpless victim to circumstances when it comes to happiness.  Happiness comes from what you feel inside about your life not externally. (although external things can certainly help amplify your happiness)  That mindset is easy to say, not so easy to put into production.  I’m working on it. Reading the book about the subconscious mind and trying to put some of it’s principles to work has been helpful.   If you told me I would be endorsing a book that talks about “scientific prayer” at this time last year I would have called you insane.

Boy would I love a 2009 Camaro.  I was very excited a few weeks back when Ali didn’t exactly crush my hopes of it.  It would be the kind of deal where I would keep this car until the day I died.  Sort of like Dad’s Alpha Romeo.

I need to shake things up a bit.  What that exactly means I’m not 100% sure of.  One thing I can pretty much guarantee is 2009 should be memorable.

Have a safe and enjoyable 2009 celebration.  Ours will be tame involving watching a stroked out Dick Clark once again with a small bottle of champagne.  With my dad, step mom, brother and their two dogs visiting a couple days later, we should have our excitement quota filled to the brim.  New Years Day I actually will be working in the office for a few hours.  I need to get some servers cleaned up and swapped around.

So a few weeks ago there was an FC on the alarm box lcd.  Ali took the initiative to call ADT and ask what it meant.  It stood for “communication failure”.  At that time they ran her through a brief communication test and told Ali it was unsuccessful.  Ali mentioned to them that we have VOIP service from Vonage.

About a week later I got a long letter in the mail from ADT about their monitoring and VOIP service.  I didn’t read it in detail but saw it said something about Comcast being a supported carrier so I figured we were good since we run Vonage through Comcast.  To make sure things were hooked up right I cut the end off a phone cord and verified I still had dial tone out at the ADT main box. I did. 

So I call ADT last night from my cell phone in order to have them test again.  Surely the first test was a fluke since I definitely have dial tone available.  The woman on the phone walks me through doing a quick test that just sounds the alarm for a couple seconds.  She said they did not receive the test. Next she has me arm the system and simulate a break in.  The alarm was blaring for a solid three minutes.  No call. 

The woman asked if I wanted to send a tech out.  Even though I mentioned at the beginning of the call that I had Vonage, I felt it was important to do it again.  I asked her if Vonage was supported or not?  She said it wasn’t.  “Well, WTF, why did we just go through all of this testing?”, I thought to myself.  I asked what good a tech would do if Vonage isn’t supported?    She ignored the question and said that my NEW options were:

1. Install a land line for use by the security system (stupid option that defeats the entire reason we got VOIP)

2. Pay ADT for a cellular backup option.  This device routes alarm calls through your cell phone. Oh, and by the way, it costs $300

3. Discontinue your monitoring contract with ADT.  

Now to me, the number three option makes the most sense.  However there is a gotcha.  There are penalties for early termination of a contract with ADT.  The thing is I have no idea what the terms of the contract are. 

To me all of the monitoring is basically a waste of money.  In fact I think the simple addition of the two ADT signs by the front and back door is all the deterrent that is needed.  Why would a potential home invader want to try to enter a home that is flagged as having a security system versus a home with no such indication? 

If the signs aren’t enough of a deterrent, the beeping the second a window or door is opened followed by the loud blaring siren should ensure that unless the robber is blind AND deaf, he should vacate the premises immediately.

The party van is also always standing guard in the driveway, making sure the house NEVER appears to be unoccupied.

Of course the security system was entirely an Ali thing.  I never even felt it was necessary.  Our house is on a busy road and out in the wide open with plenty of motion activated lighting.  It was more for just her peace of mind.

I guess I need to call ADT back to see what the penalty would be for stopping the monitoring. 

On Christmas Day after all the present opening was done, I was walking around the back yard with Nicki.  All of a sudden it struck me that Ali was missing a present I bought her, a pair of Croc like garden sandals.  I couldn’t recall receiving them.  I went inside and looked at the packing slip which said I indeed should have received them.  I racked my brain trying to remember if I did indeed get them and just hid them somewhere perhaps?  I looked in my normal hiding spots and found nothing.

So I call up Gardener’s Supply and tell them I was shorted on my order.  The phone rep was extremely nice and apologized for the mistake.  He said they would send out the sandals ASAP, awesome.  The next day I was cleaning out the spare room.  I opened up a cabinet where I jam extra Roomba stuff a low and behold, there are the sandals.  Doh!  I guess if I was saint I would have called up the catalog company and admitted the mistake was mine.  I guess I’m not a saint. We are hoping my step mom has a size nine foot.

These four day recaps are tough.

Christmas  Eve I left work a bit early to go pick up my mom.  When we got back to our place I was talking to the neighbor for a bit before going in.  Mom said she would smoke a cigarette while I did.  Well I was talking longer than the smoke break took so mom went inside the house, expecting that Ali was home.  Well Ali wasn’t home and the house alarm was set.  Mom didn’t remember the code and panicked.  She came running out to get my attention and said she didn’t know the code.  I yelled the code to her but it was too late, the alarm started blaring.  I ran over and shut it off.  It was a noisy way to start our Christmas celebration.

It was the first time mom saw our Christmas decorations in person as well as our clean pool area, bountiful garden and freshly cut grass.  She said it all looked great.  Nicki was very happy to see her grandma.  Her excitement was evident from the pee all over the kitchen floor. 

It didn’t take long till I had mom on the Wii Fit.  She was convinced she wouldn’t be able to do it, she would fall off.  The good news is if she fell, she only had three or four inches to do so.  After watching me weigh in and do some of the yoga, strength and balance games, mom reluctantly agreed to try it out. 

Mom was surprised at her weight, it was lower than she expected.  She thought that maybe the number was inaccurate but we assured her that the Wii numbers have been right inline with our bathroom scale.  Mom only did a few yoga poses, nothing extreme.  Despite her reservations about trying it, she actually did quite well on the poses she tried.  In fact she beat a few of my scores in several of them.

After her 10-15 minutes of Wii Fit mom acted like she just ran a marathon, saying how this and that is going to be sore.  I reminded her that was a GOOD thing.  The next day she was fine.

For dinner we had london broil that mom had been marinating along with sweet potatoes.  The whole deal was prepared out on the grill.  It was warm enough that we could eat Christmas Eve dinner out on the lanai, pretty sweet. For entertainment, we watched the new Miser Brother’s Christmas, which was surprisingly well done.  We followed that up by watching Fred Claus.  It seems like Vince Vaughn is the new Tim Allen of Christmas movies. He has done two in the last two years.  It was a light hearted and fun flick that I’d give a solid B to.

I stayed up quite late Christmas Eve as I started to watch Spiderman back in the bedroom.  I probably lasted close to midnight.  A scant five and a half hours later I am awakened by a black furry alarm clock that decided she was excited for Christmas to begin.  She NEVER wakes me up that early.  So Nicki and I were up for a solid two hours before everyone else decided to come out and join us.  I spent the time like I have the past few Christmas mornings, playing WoW.

So the festivities started.  Ali and I made a conscious effort to buy less this year.  We have spent lots of dinero during the year for various projects and items, we didn’t need to blow out another huge wad at Christmas.  Even with things trimmed back, we still had quite a bit to open.  I’d say we were at it for a solid hour or so.  I got a lot of cool stuff like an official Phillies World Series Champs hat and t-shirt, a new wireless N router, gigabit switch, work jeans, cordless drill, books and more.  The only thing I was surprised I didn’t see was a single Wii game.  I plan to take care of that with the multiple Best Buy gift cards I have so it’s all good. 

Ali’s “big” gift from me was two tickets to an Eagles concert in Homestead in late January.  She seemed to like all of the lesser gifts as well.  I pretty much worked off her list otherwise except for the Victoria Secret gift card and digital picture frame I threw in there.  Mom got a series of three gift certificates.  One was from me that was redeemable for a full car spa treatment, the second was from Nicki that allowed mom to rub her head and belly and the third was a gift cert, accompanied by a check that could be used to either help pay for the new appliances she just bought or for some new furniture item for her place.  She liked the gift certs but the biggest hit was a pair of flip flops that Ali found for my mom online.  They are some sort of special kind that is supposed to help tone your legs or something weird like that. 

As usually Nicki was right in the middle of the festivities.  She enjoys the present opening experience, hence my 5:15 wake up call.  After present opening mom heated up the french toast she prepared at home. Again, we ate it out on the lanai.  After breakfast we worked on cleaning up/putting away.  It was less daunting than some prior years due to fewer and smaller packages.  By the time Christmas afternoon rolled around, almost everything was put away.

I ripped out my old router and two network switches and replaced them with my two new Dlink devices.  I was impressed with the features of the Dlink router.  It is a gaming router that prioritizes gaming traffic, just what Ali wants to hear.  The new gigabit switch is pretty sweet as well, it is a 16 port GREEN switch.  It saves power by automatically turning off unused ports as well as only supplying enough power to the live connections based on the length of the cable that it is connected to, pretty slick.  The new switch not only will use less power than the two it replaces, it’s also much quieter since the Cisco switch had a very loud fan.

We had a late lunch of burgers on the grill. After that mom walked Ali through the process of cooking the beets we harvested from our garden and then I took mom back home.  I actually left my truck at her place so I could drive mom’s Rav 4 back to our place so I could clean it on Friday.  Mom was worried.

During Christmas day mom and I discussed her braking problem.  She SWEARS that in the past, when she has used the AC on her RAV 4 she has had issues with braking.  The brakes didn’t fail but she said that she had to pump them until they would grab.  Mom has told me this several times and each time I do my best to hide my skepticism.  My knowledge of how automotive systems interact made it pretty clear that brakes and AC are not connected.  If anything, I figured what mom may have experienced was the higher RPM’s the motor might hold to support the AC compressor.  Those higher rpm’s could create the need to use more brake pedal pressure to stop the vehicle, but it certainly would be nowhere near a failure situation. Well anyway, mom knew I would insist on using the AC to see if the problem occurred.  She was worried that I would wind up in an accident as a result. I assured her I would be careful.

Friday morning I started on cleaning up mom’s car nice and early.  I gave it a bath, waxed it, armor all’d the vinyl/rubber surfaces, vacuumed out the interior, cleaned the windows and sprayed Febreeze on the carpet and cloth surfaces to combat the cigarette smell.  It turned out great if I do say so myself.  It went from looking like a 12 year old vehicle to a four or five year old suv.  It’s amazing the difference a little elbow grease can make.  I had the car back to my mom at work before noon.  She was very happy with the transformation.  She asked how the brakes were.  I reported that I didn’t have any issues during the 50 or so miles I put on the vehicle with the AC on the entire time.

The rest of Friday Ali and I did a few of the things we would normally do over a weekend.  Ali also worked on cleaning up the hobby/workout room.  It was in dire need of some attention, junk was piling up everywhere.    Friday night our Tivo was void of any programming we wanted to watch so instead we dug into the vast collection of movies I have on the NAS.  We decided to watch Step Brothers, ANOTHER Will Ferrel comedy.  Will seems to like to work with the same actors in film after film.  The actress that plays his mom was in Elf, the actor that plays his step brother was in Talladega Nights.  I expected this film to be like all of the other Will Ferrel comedies, sort of funny in the beginning but hardly prompting a smile during the last half of the film.  Well thankfully this one broke the mold.

The movie was funny through out.  Ali and laughed out loud regularly.  Hopefully he remembers this formula for future films.  Comedies should not have all of their laughs reserved to the few clips they show in previews. I’d give it an A-, one of the better comedies I have seen in awhile.

Our Saturday was EXTREMELY laid back, thanks in part to what we did on Friday.  While Ali was at the gym in the morning I did an extensive Wii Fit session.  At this point I have almost every exercise unlocked.  I wanted to do EVERYTHING and see how much time I would use up.  An 1:35 of Wii exercise time later I found out.  Wii Fit does a very good job of hitting most body parts.  Following the order on the screen of Yoga, Strength and Aerobic exercises is a good fit that allows you to gradually warm up before tackling some moves that can really tax you physically.  After my marathon session I was pretty tired.

Wii Fit has been a big hit in our house.  Ali likes it because she is good at it.  I would say that she currently holds the top score in 75% of the activities.  Ali outdoing me in any video game based skill is pretty rare so she certainly enjoys turning the tables.  The logging and charting of your progress in the game is motivational as well. It’s surprising how powerful just seeing a simple line on a graph can be.

Saturday night we watched another movie in my collection, Wanted.  Wanted is an action film where Angelina Jolie, among others is part of a league of secret assassins.  The film is filled with over the top action, ridiculous plot lines, implausible character development and just lots of silliness.  The film tried to make a few good points but they became lost in all of the theatrics.  Angelina looked hot and that is probably the best thing you could say about it.    It gets a C.

Sunday was a bit more work oriented then Saturday.  While Ali was at the gym I knocked out all of the interior floor surface cleaning, pool maintenance and bedding maintenance.  Ali was exhausted after the gym and after eating lunch retired for a couple hour nap during which I just played some WoW.  I didn’t even bother turning on football.  The Eagles didn’t play till 4.  I knew the game would be meaningless since in order for the Eagles to make the playoffs both the Bears AND the Buccaneers had to lose as well as the Eagles taking out the Cowboys.  The Bears losing was possible since they were playing the Texans who are decent.  The Buccaneers losing was practically impossible since they were playing the stinking Raiders IN Tampa.  There was no way Tampa could lose that game with the playoffs on the line.

Well around 4’oclock I flipped on the tv to get ready to watch the Eagles.  The tuner just happened to be on ESPN 2 which was showing a World Strongest Man episode, one of my favorites.  As I was watching  they showed the NFL scores in the crawl at the bottom of the screen.  I saw the Tampa score, I did a double take…. the Raiders were AHEAD late in the fourth quarter!  I also saw the Bears were behind!  I quickly plugged in the satellite to see the Tampa game.  I tuned in just as the Bucs were trying to drive down the field with no time outs.  I cheered loudly as Jeff Garcia got sacked holding onto the ball way too long and time expired.  Oh my God!  What a choke! As bad as the Eagles collapse was last week, the Bucs choke was monumental.  They lost their last four games in a row to miss the playoffs, the last one to the Raiders, at home, a team whose wins can be counted on one hand. Wow. 

I could not believe the Eagles good fortune.  I proclaimed to Ali how a miracle had just taken place.  The Eagles now not only had a shot to make the playoffs, they also would be eliminating the Cowboys from the playoffs.  I was besides myself with excitement.  Imagine if the Eagles could pull off the win and snatch a playoff appearance when it seemed impossible at the start of the day?

I was worried that once again the Eagles would choke, just like last week when the stars were aligned in their favor and they responded by falling flat on their face.  The Cowboys would be playing for their playoff lives as well so it was sure to be tightly contested game.

Wow, was I wrong.  The game started off close but the defense just blew the Cowboys apart causing turnover after turnover and scoring a couple times in the process.  There were so many exciting plays in the game I couldn’t possibly document them here. 

 The 44-6 final score on top of the highly unlikely series of events that lead up to the game enabling the Eagles to gain a playoff berth, leads me to proclaim yesterday as THE most memorable day in my history of being an Eagles fan.  Making the playoffs after a year of extreme ups and downs is not on par with a Super Bowl appearance in magnitude of accomplishment but nothing I can remember generated as much excitement as the four hours I experienced yesterday. Merry Christmas, to me.

Here is the 2008 collection of xmas/birthday cards.  Having two birthdays right around the holiday adds substantially to the total.  Here is my xmas present to you, another bizarre dream.

I was in some sort of church social function.  I was there with my dad, step mom, and brother, Todd.  There are people all out on a dance floor with a live band and microphone.  All of a sudden I find myself behind the mic, singing some song, badly.  I don’t know half of the words and what I did know didn’t sound good either.  As I sung the room at first slowly and then quickly started to clear out.  Obviously people could hardly stand the sound of my voice.  Then some bitchy looking woman comes up to me before I was done singing.  She starts yelling at me, saying I’m not singing with enough energy and enthusiasm.  I say “I’m Hank Williams, I don’t sing this type of music” (yes I was pretending to be Hank Williams evidently)

The woman snatches the mic from me and starts singing herself, trying to save the event.  I am furious that my dad even expected me to try to act like Hank Williams.  I am also embarrassed by what just transpired and start to march out of the building with my dad, step mom and Todd behind me.  As I was walking out the door I saw a few church board members.  I yell in their general direction, “As far as I’m concerned, the board members can all go f themselves!”

So we are outside walking through the church yard to the parking lot.  My dad is very angry at me for my embarrassing poor singing performance as well as my insults to the church board members.  He says something like “you realize there is going to be a huge argument about this…”  I spin around and start screaming at my dad, I am so mad I am shaking.  I yell ” for 10 years I have been coming to this f’ing church, acting like Hank Williams!  The only reason I did it was to try to please YOU!”  My dad is stunned into silence.

Then Todd speaks to me.  “You know, you have always been creepy..” “Creepy?!”, I say, “WTF do you mean “creepy”?”  He says, “ever since 7th grade I knew you were creepy when you said stuff about Lithuania invading Harrisburg..”  It was my turn to stand there dumbfounded. End of dream.

Happy Holidays.

So yesterday was Ali’s birthday.  She didn’t have any extravagant birthday meal requests, just pizza from Hungry Howie’s and cupcakes from Publix, easy enough.  I gave her her birthday gift last night as well, a watch.  It’s an Accutron with a pink face with diamonds circling around it.  The pink is close to her sorority pink so I figured she would like it. She did.

She had one more request, that I watch Mama Mia with her.  Normally watching a musical like Mama Mia would be right up there with a prostate exam on my list of things I’d rather not do.  However since it was Ali’s birthday I had little choice but to happily agree.  Oh I wasn’t allowed to fall asleep during it either. I watched the entire 90 minutes or so filled with non-stop dancing and singing.  I have to admit, it wasn’t bad.  I found it entertaining enough and at no time did I feel like stabbing out my eyeballs with an ice pick like I did while watching Chicago.  Ali was happy I watched it with her.  I’d give it a B+.

There is ANOTHER fantastic game out for the Iphone/Touch, called TapDefense.  It is tower defense for the Iphone.  I was first introduced to tower defense games back when I was still playing Starcraft.    They had a mod for SC that turned it into a tower defense game.  The premise of tower defense seems very simplistic and even boring. The reality is it is highly addictive and requires much planning and strategy.

  In simple terms, the object of the game is to construct towers along a road.  On this road travel various bad guys that you need to kill.  The bad guys do nothing but move along the road, they don’t attack you.  They do however have different “strengths”.  Some move really fast, some have very high armor that takes a lot of firepower to bring down.  To counter the enemy abilities you have various sorts of towers that you can deploy.  Some are meant to blast the hell out of people, some just slow them down, others have a very long range while others have high damage but can only fire a limited distance.  On top of all of that there is a money managing element to the contest.  You collect gold as you clear levels and you spend that gold to buy new towers and upgrade existing ones.  It takes careful management to find the right balance where you have enough money in the bank as well as having enough firepower to kill all of the baddies without any escaping.  Sound stupid?  It’s not.  Try it, you will see.  I was up till after 11 laying in bed trying to find that sweet spot.  It has eluded me thus far.

Our weekend started at 4:30 Saturday morning as we drug ourselves out of bed for a race.  It was a 5mile race in Marco Island.  It’s the first race we timed since late October.  I wasn’t sure what to expect since we had nearly a 10% miss rate the last time out.  This wasn’t a huge race with a total of a little more than 200 runners participating.

This time I took some advice I heard regarding the DAG systems sensitivity to metallic objects by locating the timing lines outside of the aluminum ladders.  In my testing I noticed my detection height was much better.  The timing of the race went better than last time.  We had one chip that completely died and a couple others that didn’t read for some reason, possibly being attached incorrectly.  We also had the normal few people that for some one reason or another did not have a chip at all. However all in all, it went pretty smooth. 

It seems that the biggest obstacle we face is getting runners to properly attach the chip to the sneaker.  I would have never thought it would be that much of a struggle.  I constantly see people attaching them wrong.  Part of it is race staff’s fault.  There needs to be more hand holding in the process.  I hear far too often “here is your chip, do you know how to put it on?”  Of course most people don’t want to admit they need help so they take their chip and then go and struggle with it for 5 minutes and many times still wind up attaching it wrong.  I’m not quite sure how to overcome that besides having the SAME people handing out chips every race and have those people give each and every person explicit instructions and/or help the runners attach the chip.  I really would like to go to some product that allows the device to be strapped to the ankle.  That is harder to mess up.

When we got back Ali was exhausted.  I was pretty tired too but I had grass cutting on my mind.  While she took a nap I headed out to tend to the grass.  We probably have not mowed for well over a month.  The grass didn’t look bad but was rough around the edges.  I wanted it to look nice and uniform for our visitors.  I mowed and weed whacked everything myself which took upwards of three hours. I was very conscious of my forearm during the process since I knew that weed whacking is one of the primary culprits behind my forearm issues.

Saturday night Ali, me, my mom and two of our friends went out to Carraba’s to do a joint birthday dinner for Ali and I. We got there right around 6.  I expected it to be full but not packed.  Well there were cars parked on the grass and not a spot to be found in their parking lot.  I wound up parking next door in front of a small strip mall.  Ali did the “call ahead seating” thing so we hoped it would cut down on the wait. 

It was weird, even though the parking was so tight, inside the place didn’t seem all that full.  We were easily able to get to the bar.  I’ve been there when the bar is surrounded by a wall of people three or four deep.  One good part of getting there early is the opportunity to participate in the 2 for 1 happy hour.  I decided I was going to drink, something I do very rarely.  Before the night was over I had six beers, albeit the light variety.

Our waiter sort of looked like Gary from the Stern show,  His name was Jeremy.  It seemed like he was a stand up comedian who was moonlighting as a waiter.  He was filled with funny one liners that he dropped rapid fire all night long. He was really funny and added tremendously to the enjoyment of the meal.  Although I have always loved Carraba’s, in recent years our trips there have been less than spectacular because the wait staff was just average.  They were polite and prompt but not very interesting.  Jeremy rocked.  He was good enough that I would feel inclined to ask to be seated in Jeremy’s section the next time I go there.

When we got home I had ideas of watching the season finale of Celebrity Rehab.  I laid down in bed and closed my eyes for just a second.  The next thing I knew it was 1am and I was in bed with all of my clothes on.  Evidently the combo of getting up at 4:30 with the six beers proved to be a powerful sleeping pill.   I got up, took of my clothes, brushed my teeth, went to the bathroom and went back to bed.

Sunday morning I got up feeling a bit hazy but not full blown hung over.  While Ali went to spinning class I started on more chores.  I finished up steam cleaning the carpet shortly after noon.  I thought the Eagles played at one.  I soon discovered they didn’t play till 4.  I watched a portion of several 1 o’clock games, mostly because I was interested in the teams playing in the frigid, arctic conditions.  It was very odd.  In several cases teams racked up huge offense despite the conditions.  The Patriots game was incredible.  They marched up and down the snow covered field like it was nothing, destroying the Cardinals.  The Dolphins and Chiefs also put up huge offensive numbers despite wind chills that dipped sub-zero.  I love bad weather games.

Note I said I like bad WEATHER games, not BAD games like the Eagles/Skins game.  Where do I start?  Ok the gods apparently seemed to be smiling on the Eagles.  Thanks to the Buccaneers losing to the Chargers, the Eagles actually were in control of their own destiny.  If they won their last two games they were in the playoffs, no more help needed.  The Eagles have looked borderline unstoppable the last three games, rolling up tons of points on the Cardinals, Giants and Browns.  They were facing a Redskin team that has been in free fall with a 7-7 record after starting 6-2.  The Skins just have not been able to beat anyone lately, including the Bengals. 

Well from the get go it seemed to me that the Eagles were starting to believe their own hype.  I got the impression that they thought they should be able to just go out there and win, easily.  There was no urgency or passion in their play on offense.  It didn’t take very long for Andy Reid to panic and totally abandon the running game.  Donovan, who had been playing with confidence and passion the last 3 games as a result of his benching seemed to take a step back once again.  He once again made no plays with his legs and made some very erratic throws.  His receivers let him down as well.  There were a ton of dropped balls, some of which were crushing like the two that DeSean “I like to run backwards” Jackson dropped. 

Brian Westbrook hurt himself again and was obviously gimpy but instead of putting in a healthy Buckholder, Fat Andy kept trotting Westbrook out there.  The entire game the Eagles were working out of a hole thanks to bad punting by Sav Rocca and the Eagles inability to do ANYTHING on offense.  They started behind their own 20 yard line a ridiculous amount of times.

The defense did a nice job of shutting down the Skins but they are not without blame either.  A good team makes plays when they are presented to them more often than not.  The defense had two golden opportunities to turn the game around.  The skins threw into the end zone.  The ball hit an Eagle defender in the arms.  Instead of catching it, the ball bounces up into the air, like a perfect set in volleyball.  There are three Eagles in the vicinity, not a single one could make the play and make the INT.  Result, three points for the Skins instead of Eagle ball at the 20. 

Then Asante Samuel, Mr multi-million dollar free agent, has a SURE interception floating his way.  He is in perfect position to snag it and run it back.  Instead, he lets the ball hit him right in the hands and bounce away.  It was PATHETIC.  When he dropped it I went ballistic.  I started screaming obscenities at the tv.  Nicki scampered back to the bedroom and Ali scolded me.  Just as I finished, Troy Aikman said “that is the sort of play that the Eagles paid millions of dollars for Asante Samuel to make…” “EXACTLY!” I blurted out.  I was so pissed off.  So instead of it being Eagles ball, deep in Skins territory, they instead get pinned once again at their 3 yard line.

The entire game was like that, the Eagles being handed opportunity after opportunity and doing nothing with it.  A good team doesn’t do that.  The last play of the game was suitably crushing.  With no time outs (since as usual the Birds had clock management problems) and 12 seconds on the clock, the Eagles run a play.  They have time for two plays but the play has to be either into the end zone or out of bounds to stop the clock.  Donovan fires a ball to Reggie Brown, who has been a huge non-factor this year.  He went from being the Eagles next number one receiver to a healthy scratch the last few weeks.  He just seems like a grumpy baby with no heart.  Well anyway, the ball gets thrown to him.  Instead of running the pattern into the end zone, he catches the ball at like the one yard line.  There are two Redskins waiting for him and they drive him back immediately, mere inches away from scoring.  Time expires, game is over, the Eagles have once again massively choked when the pressure was on.

I can’t tell you how disappointing that performance was.  I am tired of the roller coaster.  I want a coach that gets pissed off.  I want a QB that doesn’t throw 20% of his balls in the dirt or behind receivers after 10 years in the league.  I want the face of this team to express emotion and to knock heads.  We’ve tried it Andy’s way for a decade.  Yep it has gotten us a lot of wins.  It also has brought a ton of heart ache as the team consistently fails when it matters the most.  I would LOVE to see Bill Cowher on the sidelines.  Philly fans would absolutely adore him.

I managed to develop yet another ailment that inhibits one of my few remaining exercises I can do.  The palm of my left hand feels like it has a deep bruise of some sort.  Applying pressure to it, such in the manner you do when performing a push up has become increasingly more painful recently.  My positive attitude has been under assault by the negative troll in my head that likes to focus on everything wrong.

We have used Symantec products at work as long as I have been there.  Over the years their AV and spam products have done a satisfactory job although the cost for doing so always seemed high to me.  Things started going bad a couple years ago.

Symantec’s product for scanning Exchange for viruses and spam introduced PREMIUM ANTI SPAM.  This was an optional add on for the product.  It promised better spam detection than the base product.  In reality there was next to ZERO spam detection unless you ponied up additional dollars for the premium spam detection.  It really annoyed me that they double dipped the customer like that.  Pay once for the product and then pay more if you want the product to actually work, great business model.

Then Syamntec introduced version 11 of their product called Symantec Endpoint Protection.  This thing is in a word, a pig.  It’s initial release was so buggy that it actually knocked servers offline, making them unable to communicate with clients.  The package is massive bloatware on both the server and client levels.  Any client that is unlucky enough to have SEP loaded on it instantly becomes bogged down by the huge resource demands the software demands.  SEP is a dog, a big fat, lazy dog.  It has all of these features that we didn’t need which did nothing but contribute to the bloat.  The server install is equally messy, requiring installation of a secondary web server as well as using a slow, buggy java app to manage it all. 

Well our renewal was coming due and I decided to look at Vipre from Sunbelt Software.  I have dealt with Sunbelt for years.  They are located right next door in Tampa.  I have read good things about it and downloaded the eval.  Vipre is all about speed.  It concentrates on doing a few things well, anti-virus and anti-malware detection/removal.  The entire Vipre package was only 36 meg.  SEP requires two cd’s worth of code.  Installation of Vipre was easy, the management console was intuitive and pushing out the client was simple.  Another plus is you can automate the removal of SEP when you install the Vipre client.   

Once I got the quote for the product I was treated to yet another pleasant surprise.  The costs are a fraction charged by a corporate monster like Symantec.  In fact over the next three years we would be paying approximately 40% of what we would if we stayed with Symantec. Game over.  I’ll be deploying Vipre over the next few weeks as well as Ninja, their Exchange protection package.  See ya SEP.

So after all the bullshit with IX, I thought I was maybe finally out of the woods after talking to Kenny the manager.  Kenny told me that a vulnerability had been found and was in the process of being addressed.  Well my hopes were dismissed this morning when I discovered that malicious java code was once again injected into the site description of  my PHPBB3 bulletin boards in two domains.

Of course I was pissed.  I decided to forego the electronic ticket system that always seems to route to the Ukraine based dummies.  I called instead.  I got someone that spoke english and I told him the deal.  He asked if I could send in the code that was inserted so they could look into it.  Well at least he didn’t say it was my fault as the Ukraine folks like to do.  We’ll see what happens, if anything.

This weekend is going to be insanely busy.  Tomorrow we have a race to time first thing.  Once returning from that I have a bunch of stuff I want to get done prior to mom’s visit for the holidays.  The list includes mowing and weed whacking, steam cleaning the carpet and a bunch of smaller jobs that are too numerous to list.  We also are going out Saturday night to dinner with my mom to celebrate Ali and my birthdays.  Oh well, it is the holiday season, you are supposed to be busy.   

I did 25 minutes of Wii Fit time last night.  I was starting to sweat through my shirt by the time I was done.

If you have an Ipod Touch or an Iphone I strongly recommend you do a search for “deadbeef” in the app store.  It is a frantic, fun shooter that really shows off  the graphic and high speed action capabilities of the Iphone.  I was playing it as I walked around the front yard this morning waiting for Nicki to do her business.

Ali and did our second day of Wii Fit exercises.  It is just plain fun.  I spent some time perusing the Nintendo Channel on the Wii.  It is a place where you can watch various videos about various Wii happenings and software titles.  I watched several clips of Wii Music in action.  Damn,that looks like great time as well, even for those that aren’t musically inclined such as myself.

In case you haven’t noticed, mortgage interest rates are incredibly low, the lowest they have been since the 60’s.  It actually has got Ali and I considering refinancing our current mortgage and equity line into one, significantly lower, fixed payment.  Currently both of our loans are variable and can float as the prime changes.  Of course right now they are low because the prime is so low. But once rates go back up, which they eventually will, both of our payments will rise with them.  There are pros and cons to refinancing versus doing nothing. 

I just have the feeling it is one of those situations where if we do nothing, in 5 years we could be kicking ourselves in the head for staying put.  Since we don’t have the cash to scoop up all of the dirt cheap real estate deals out there it would be at least a small way to make some lemonade out of the current lemon-like economic conditions.

I had a very enjoyable birthday evening.  Ali snagged me meatloaf at the grocery store as my birthday dinner. Meatloaf is something that just doesn’t show up very often when your wife is a vegetarian.  She rounded it off with one of my favorite vegetables, lima beans.  For my birthday I got to open the Wii Fit that I bought on Black Friday as well as getting a gift cert for a massage from Ali.  Ali also made the classic chocolate cake to go on top of the Christmas cookies she made over the weekend.

I unpacked and set up the Wii Fit to check it out.  It kept Ali and I busy until around 10 pm trying out the various exercises and games.  The Wii Fit is in a word , sweet.  The board comes with little “extenders” that attach to the feet to use the board on carpet.  At first I didn’t use the extenders and it miscalculated my weight by 10 pounds.  I was sort of mystified about how the extenders attached because they would not stay attached.  I’d press them on and they popped right off.  I wound up having to slide them onto the board once it was sitting on the floor.  It seemed that after using the board all night, our body weight wedged the extenders in place enough that they stayed on.

We went through the process of setting up our profiles in Wii Fit.  They basically ask you your height and age.  You then step on the board and it weighs you.  My weight seemed right in-line with what the bathroom scale says.  Based on these numbers it calculates your BMI and lets you know where it falls in the good to bad range.  Both Ali and I fell safely in the GOOD area.  The program then encourages you to set a goal which it will track as you go along.  I set a goal of losing 3 pounds in two weeks.

So then you get down to TRAINING.  It categorizes the activities into 4 sections, yoga, strength, cardio and balance games.  Ali went first and went into the yoga section. You pick a personal “trainer” to walk you through the exercises, either a man or a woman. The trainers kind of look like ghosts and their mouths move very little as they speak.  Ali picked the guy, I picked the woman.  The trainer shows you exactly how to do the movement and then walks you through the exercises, offering feedback and encouragement along the way based on how well or poorly you are doing. 

Doing Wii exercise is all about balance.  As you do the different movements and exercises your goal is to do so while maintaining your balance which is graphically represented on the screen.  It adds a whole new element to exercise.

Some of the exercises were quite tough, even for someone with an established fitness base.  I could hardly believe that the one of the basic strength moves that is first available for abs is the jack knife.  The jack knife is very tough.  After 10 reps I was working very hard.  Doing the push up / side plank combo on the board was very challenging as well.

I struggled with many of the balance games.  Many of them require you to constantly shift weight back and forth.  It found it very hard to precisely control my movements.  I enjoyed the ski jumping the most.  The aerobic activities are very fun.  Watching Ali do the hula hoop challenge was very entertaining.

  Like most Wii games, the interface and interaction is just about perfect.  The game rewards you for your hard work by adding points to a time bank for each thing that you do.  As the time bank grows, new exercises, activities and games are unlocked. The Wii Fit even recognized that yesterday was my birthday and offered me copious amounts of well wishes about it, funny.

  The combination of positive reinforcement along with goal setting and detailed, automatic tracking of your progress should help people stay motivated. That being said, it doesn’t surprise me what I read the other day.  Some survey said that 60% of people that buy Wii Fit use it once and never again.  I guess when some people realize Wii Fit can be REAL exercise that makes you sweat and struggle, it crossed the line of FUN to WORK.  It’s a shame though, because I think they did a real nice job with the product.  I am hoping to work it in daily as a replacement for the push up / ab quickie routine I do each night after work.   

Wii fit gets two thumbs up from me.

Behold my dream car I owned in my early 20’s…