Archives 2008

null

So at the gym today my one gym buddy directs me to the back corner where there are three women working out.  Two of them are younger, one obviously has 20 years on the other two.  The older woman had hair like Judith Light, the sitcom staple from the 80’s and early 90’s.  She evidently was the “trainer”.  She carried a tape measure around her neck during the entire session, evidently to take her clients measurements.  The funny thing was this woman looked like the only thing she was trained to do was sit on the couch.  She was built like a giant pear.  Her clients were in better shape then she was. 

Well that was funny and all but then we got to watch her put these poor girls through some exercises.  Every single thing she showed them was incorrect.  She was showing them bad to borderline dangerous form on each exercise.  I can only imagine how much she is charging for her services.  I’d like to see her training certification that she bought from ebay.

When I got Ali the Treo 750 with Windows Mobile 6 one of the neato things I was looking forward to was her being able to read her HTML formatted email on the unit to save her time.  Well I was pissed to find out that MSFT would only support this if you were running Exchange 2007 on your back end.  I am running Exchange 2003.  To me it is a sneaky way to coerce upgrades.  So I had to just live with it.  Well I was thrilled to find out that the Apple Touch 2.0 update supports Exchange Activesync natively.  Not only does it support it, it lets you read HTML email!  It seems ironic to me that in order to cash in on what Windows Mobile promised, I need to use an Apple product.

I have been still messing with the Ipod Touch over the last few days.  I have been quite impressed with the apps available through the Itunes app.  However there is a whole other world out there if you are willing to take it a step further and “jailbreak” your device.  Jailbreaking an Iphone or Ipod Touch involves dumping a custom version of firmware that lets your device out of the “jail” of Apple control, allowing you to install apps from anywhere, not just through Itunes.  I am enjoying what I can already do on the Touch so I am not going to try to jail break it just yet.  I’ll save that project for a rainy day.

Last night my project was trimming up the cabbage palm behind the pool cage.  There were a bunch of dead and/or hanging fronds.  This tree has grown to be VERY tall.  Thank goodness the pole saw extends a good 15 feet or so.  It took a good 40 minutes until I lopped off everything I wanted to.

This weekend will be busy prepping for the arrival of my brother and sister and their respective families.  I also will be running over to mom’s place to put together a crib thing as well as drop off our big folding table to be used for the big family dinner she has planned.

The other day Ali said she might go see Mama Mia by herself on one of her days off during the week.  I immediately felt bad by the thought of her going to the movies alone and offered up if she wanted to see the movie bad enough to go alone that I would bite the bullet and go with her.  Yes I know this movie is 180 degrees in the opposite direction of the sort of movie I would enjoy but I’m willing to do it since Ali routinely accompanies me to see things get blown up.

For some reason Jeremy is fascinated with my opinions on things.  He asked me to comment on this first time home buyers program. Jeremy is up in arms about it.  He doesn’t like the potential for consumer fraud in the program where someone could grab the tax credit, get their house foreclosed on but then keep the money.  I told him that it is simply an effort by the government to stimulate the real estate market which could severely use a kick in the ass.  Of course there will be shmucks that try to work the system and get something for nothing.  However that certainly would not be unique to this program, it is a staple of American society.  Work the system to get more than your fair share, f the other guy who really needs the help.

 Hell I’d be more pissed about the idea of a government that is buried in historical, record setting debt, digging that hole deeper to offer ridiculous STIMULUS checks to supposedly stimulate the economy that were really just a tool for political pandering.  We all see how much those checks did to help the economy out, things are just as rosey as dog shit.

So for the first time in 9 months I did two 300 workouts during the same week.  I was totally expecting this session to be hell.  I was still somewhat sore from my Monday 300 plus two additional days of workouts in between.  To help numb the aches I popped an aspirin around 11.  I was amazed that today’s session went significantly better than Monday.  Keeping HoH during rest periods wasn’t a big deal at all, my energy level just felt much better.  I am pretty sure I did today’s workout faster than Monday. The human body is an odd machine.

Something not unexpected is that the McCain campaign has already abandoned it’s pledge to take the high road during this campaign and avoid negative angles. What Obama said was absolutely correct, the Republicans are pulling out their favorite tactic, fear.  Be afraid of change, it’s “safer” to stick with the old codger that represents nothing but more traditional old style politics, even if those politics have lead us right into the shitter.  The thing that amazes me about Obama is he just stays cool as a cucumber no matter what is thrown at him.  Compare that with our current president that gets tied in knots if you ask him to recite the alphabet.

After work last night I decided to be productive.  I pulled the tractor out front and worked on removing the mowing deck in preparation for the replacement belt that should show up in a day or so. When I pulled the deck out and flipped it over I did a double take when I saw a hole bigger than the size of a golf ball blown through the deck.  WTF???   

I asked Ali if she remembered hitting anything with the tractor she said she didn’t.  I remembered when I was out mowing I hit a big rock, I wondered if that rock actually punched through the deck.  Well whatever the cause I had to address it somehow.  I brought out the pressure washer and blasted all the crud from the deck until I had nice clean metal around the hole.  Then I spotted the HVAC tape I had hanging by the workbench.  HVAC tape is like metallic duct tape.  So I covered the hole with 5 layers of tape, it did a nice job of adhering to the deck and covering the hole.  I won’t know how durable the repair is until the mower is back in action. I think when the object blasted through the deck it damaged the belt that broke subsequently.

I noticed another problem with the deck.  The mower blades that I just replaced a few weeks ago were already very dull.  There was no edge at all really, just a rounded off mess.  So I decided to throw on the other set of blades that I bought off Ebay.  I’m not sure if they got dull quickly from hitting obstacles in the yard or because they are just shitty quality blades.

Our neighbors let us borrow their John Deere tractor to finish up mowing our grass.  I went over and grabbed it last night.  It is a 42 inch deck model like our Cub Cadet but it has a stronger 20 HP engine compared to the 16.5 hp ours has.  The power became immediately apparent once I engaged the blades.  The tractor powered through the thick areas of our lawn where our Cadet normally will struggle.  Normally we have to slow down significantly when mowing these sections, with the John Deere I could keep on trucking.

  On the negative side, the blades on the John Deere are turned on by flipping a long lever up by the steering wheel.  The first time I flipped it, I was rewarded with getting smacked in the knee.  The Cub Cadet has a tidy little knob you pull out which I prefer.  The John Deere also had that incredibly annoying “safety” feature where it won’t let you mow while backing up.  One of the first things I did when I got the Cub Cadet was find out how to disable that.  It’s very annoying to not be able to mow going backwards when you are trying to get into nooks and crannies of the yard.  The increased power of the tractor definitely made mowing go quicker.  It convinced me that our next tractor will have a bigger engine as well as a larger mowing deck.

Nothing else to say, tough.

It’s nice to know that McCain is already owned by big oil.  Four dollar a gallon gas is a blessing.

Standing before a room of oil company executives in June, John McCain flip-flopped and declared support for coastal oil drilling. Now the Washington Post is reporting that, within days, oil and gas execs ponied up nearly $1 million to elect McCain.¹ It’s another piece of evidence that in a McCain White House, oil companies will call the shots—just as they have with President Bush.

Yesterday, MoveOn members jumped into action in response to the Post story, placing “For Sale” signs on McCain headquarters in 10 battleground states to call public attention to it.² At the same time, McCain made our point for us, holding a photo-op yesterday in front of a California oil well and renewing his push for offshore drilling.³

McCain’s hoping to use gas prices as a wedge issue to win the election. That’s why it’s so critical that we keep spreading the message that McCain’s been heavily influenced by the oil companies—and so we can’t count on him to solve the energy crisis. When people think of Bush, they think “oil,” but that’s not true of McCain yet—even though his energy policy is almost identical to Bush’s and his campaign is literally run by oil lobbyists!⁴

There have been a couple local news stories making national headlines one serious, one hilarious. There have been a rash of coyote attacks recently where coyotes have attacked and killed small dogs and cats.  In some cases the dogs were attacked while being walked by their owners.  Well today there is a story of another coyote attack in East Naples however this time it is on video.  Evidently some woman had an extensive outdoor camera rig set up to catch vandals in her area.  Instead of vandals it caught footage of a coyote chasing a cat up a tree and later killing it and taking it away.  Stories like this remind people we live right in the middle of what used to be natural swamplands filled with various wildlife, some of it dangerous.  You can’t really blame the coyote, it’s just trying to survive.  If food was that scarce, I’m sure cannibalism wouldn’t be out of question for the human race.

The other story involves some Hungarian immigrant that stole 42 cents from a local mall fountain.  Yes, 42 cents and YES he was arrested. Yes it sounds totally ridiculous and the incident has blown up in the local papers with some local politicians chastising the police department for even making the arrest.  There is however more to the story than you would think as there is the possibility that this Mad Hungarian could possibly be here illegally although the arresting officer certainly didn’t know this at the time. And to be fair, the officer, a woman, indicated that she did not want to make the arrest but had no choice because the rent-a-cops at the mall insisted they wanted to press charges.  It’s all quite silly, unless you are the 42 cent thief.

Nicki has been on a small steroid pill for a week or so to address a problem with her ears.  Her ear problem has gotten better but the pill appears to have really increased her appetite.  She is ALWAYS hungry.  This is an odd thing for her since there used to be days when she would skip eating her supper altogether.  Now she digs into her plate almost as soon as we put it down.  She eats every last morsel and once her plate is totally clean she will keep licking it, hoping to make more food magically appear.  Her hunger could also be from us eliminating the dry dog food from her supper mixture which added a lot of filler and fat to her diet.  That has been replaced with rice and vegetables.  Even after a plate full of food Nicki will immediately start begging for more food right up until bed time.

My morning routine is so routine it almost seems like I could do it with my eyes closed.  This morning the routine didn’t go quite so well.  I pulled a small plate out of the cabinet to put the wet cat food on.  Somehow it managed to slip out of hand and smashed into a million pieces on the tile floor.  Of course it made a huge noise and Ali shot out of bed.  She helped me pick up some of the big chunks and grabbed the shop vac to get the smaller chunks.  I told her I would sweep up the rest so she could go back to bed.  I felt bad for waking her up.  So I finished up sweeping and continued on.

A few minutes later I was working on preparing my egg beater breakfast.  I opened up a new jug of orange juice.  I took the lid off and then peeled off the freshness seal thing.  I screwed the cap back on to shake the juice up.  Well as I start shaking I instantly start getting sprayed with OJ.  Like a dumb ass I must have cross threaded the cap.  So I slammed the juice container in the sink as I cleaned up myself and the floor and then hosed off the container as well in the sink.  Ugh it was annoying.

My latest thing in WoW has been running “dailies”  Dailies are quests that you can repeat each day.  The idea is you run these quests every day which give you significant financial rewards for doing so.  It is a relatively easy way to make money in the game.  However there is one problem, horde players do dailies as well.  When you are on a PvP (player vs player) server like I am there are no restrictions on when you can be attacked by enemy players.  “Mature” players typically don’t bother attacking other players in the area where you do dailies.  There is a mutual understanding that players are there to get the quests done, get their money and move on.  Well the problem is when annoying little pricks get involved.  They enjoy griefing other players, attacking them to just make their lives miserable.  I’m ok with that when I am just out and about but when I am trying to quickly get these quests done it really pisses me off.

Well last night I logged in for a bit to do dailies with my one character.  In the first 5 minutes I was killed 5 times by horde.  I was so f’ing pissed. So I said to myself “F the dailies” my mission became to kill any horde that I could.  My mission was a miserable failure.  I attacked at least a dozen horde and maybe killed 3.  The others either had elite gear, buddies that helped them kill me, or were just better pvp’rs than me.  It was just miserable.  I logged off feeling like a failure.

Almost 35,000 pounds.  That is the approximate amount of weight that I move during my roughly half hour 300 sessions.  That is figuring in my approximately 175 pounds of body weight.  That figure doesn’t account for the 50 floor wipers since I don’t really know how to quantify that move in terms of weight. In comparison if I run numbers on a “normal” gym day doing conventional exercises like for example a chest/back day, my heaviest conventional day, I may push 25,000 pounds.  If you also figure in that I take 25-30 minutes to do a 300 versus 45 minutes for my conventional work outs it piles on the effort.  More weight moved in less time = results.

Those of you that know me know that I am a reality TV junkie.  Knowing this you would assume when I mention the HoH factor I would be talking about the Head of Household in Big Brother (which we are watching btw). You would be wrong though.  In this case HoH stands for “Hands on Hips” and refers to the only allowable resting position in today’s 300 workout. 

Awhile back I read some article about an off season training program that many elite NFL players attend.  It is a grueling physical work out where the players are put through a series of brutal exercises with minimal rest in between.  One of the things they mentioned in the article was the trainers do not allow the players to use anything other than their hands on their hips during the brief rest periods.  No hands on the knees with the head down, no taking a knee and most certainly no sitting or laying down.  The thought process is maintaining your upright position even after hard physical exertion amplifies the exercise, making your heart continue to work to get blood to the top of your upright head. 

I have used the HoH principal now and then but for the most part I normally will find myself leaning on my knees or up against something as I get deeper into the 300.  By the time I finish the 50 one handed clean and presses I am gasping for air.  Well today I stuck to HoH only.  It was tough as a few times I felt light headed and dizzy.  I just kept walking it off, keeping myself upright despite the urge to bend down to lower elevations.  The reason I am trying to tweak myself is I want to start working towards multiple 300 sessions with the goal of hitting a 1500 sometime.  If I want to be able to work towards that, I need to be able to get through sessions using the HoH method.

I had to laugh as I noticed the gas prices starting to creep downward a little bit.  It’s so predictable .  If you remember back to 2006 when we THOUGHT gas prices were high at $3 a gallon, they magically started to recede as we approached the November election.  Republicans were hoping the lower gas prices would translate into votes.  It didn’t work.  Like clock work, by January the gas prices shot right back up to their prior levels.

Now the prices have continued to spiral out of control rapidly.  Once again I totally expect the Republicans to call in favors to the big oil companies that own them, asking for them to skim a little from their billions and billions in profit to make it appear that things aren’t really all that horrible.  Just watch, by the time the elections hit I bet gas will be at least 50 cents a gallon less and the Republicans will ring the bells claiming this as some great accomplishment.  Only the truly stupid would not be able to see through such manipulation.  The Elephant Party is counting exactly on that.  They know America’s greatest natural resource is ignorance.

So the vast part of my Saturday was spent working on the pool cage.  Before the actual cleaning process started I got sidetracked into a series of tree transplants.  We had a bunch of trees on the lanai that were either ready to go into the ground or ready to be moved into bigger pots.  We moved at least 6 or 7 of them to new homes which took quite awhile.  Only after that did I start in earnest with the lanai cleaning. 

First up I used the shop vac to go around and sweep up all the damn spider webs I could see.  The spiders love to weave webs around the bottom of the furniture and in dark corners.  After I got as much as I could I wheeled the pressure washer in to start a more than two hour session.  First I blasted the pool cage.  Cleaning the cage, especially the overhead sections is quite tedious.  Trying to hold the powerful pressure gun overhead with one arm while trying to accurately blast the frame is not fun.  There are sections of the overhead frame above the middle of the pool that I just can’t reach.  I thought I would spend some extra effort and lugged the ladder in to address the problem.  It was barely high enough to lean against the upper frame sections.  Even with the ladder and even with my long arms reaching as far as I could without falling into the pool I could not reach 100% of the frame which annoyed me.  At one point I laid the ladder out flat across the corners of the pool which allowed me to carefully “walk” on water to reach more sections of the cage frame.  Still there was a couple feet  of unblasted frame in the middle of the pool that I just couldn’t reach. 

So after the frame ut was time to blast down the furniture, the grill, the fire pit and finally the pool deck itself.  It is a very slow process cleaning the pool deck one 6 inch swipe at a time.  Back and forth, back and forth I went, mimicking one of those old men at the beach waving their metal detectors back and forth.  Finally the last section of deck had been blasted.  I enlisted Ali, who had been out weeding and mowing the back of the yard while I cleaned the deck, to help me get the stuff back on the deck.  I didn’t want to track junk back on to the deck right away so I would hand stuff to her at the door and she would put it back in place.  The end result of all the work was a much brighter and cleaner looking deck, ready for a visit from my bro and sis in a couple weeks. 

The Star 100 pool drain covers are an official success. I had the Hayward pool cleaner running all day long and it didn’t get hung up a single time.  It’s wonderful.

I asked Ali if she wanted to clean up and go to the movies Saturday night.  She said she was beat and would rather not which I was fine with.  We made tentative plans to go on Sunday instead.

 So Sunday morning I wanted to get to it early and knock out the rest of the yard work so we would have a clear schedule to go to the movies.  When Ali left for spinning class I headed outside.  I decided to mow first, weed whack second.  My mowing system breaks our area up into 4 sections.  I was just about done with the first section when I heard the blades shut off after running over a clump of wet, cut grass.  Weird.  So I turned off the blade button and pulled it back on again, hoping it was just some glitch.  No such luck, the blades still weren’t turning.  I glanced down to my left and see the broken deck belt laid out on the ground.  Well that cut my session short obviously.  I figured on the way to the movies I could stop and get a replacement belt, put it on after the movies and finish up the mowing when we got home.  Sounds like a plan.  So I grabbed the weed whacker and knocked the trimming out at least.

During the brief period where I was mowing I was using another awesome free program for the Ipod touch called Pandora. Pandora is a cool app for you Iphone/Touch that allows you to stream internet radio.  It is incredibly simple to use.  You simply type in a an artist, album or song name.  It shows you the closest matches.  You select the match you want and BAM, it starts streaming by that artist as well as other other artists of a similar genre/style.  It is fantastic.  Anyway I was able to be out there on the mower streaming internet radio to the Touch via my wireless network inside.  I didn’t do it very long though since I had to have the Touch at max volume just to be heard over the mower noise, not a good way to maintain your hearing.  I used the Touch repeatedly over the weekend to stream music, it was a great thing.

So we headed out to the movies and made the planned stop at Home Depot to grab a belt.  I brought the old one with for a reference.  I have repeatedly met with frustration trying to do something as simples as buy replacement blades for my 4 year old mower at Home Depot or Lowe’s.  Neither of these retail giants carry the blades anymore.  It makes me nuts.  Well I should have known better than to expect Home Depot to carry the belts I needed either.  Of course they didn’t have them as I triple checked each belt.  I even pulled a few out for other manufacturers and held them up to my broken belt to see if I could find a close fit.  No luck.  I came back out to the car and announced my lack of success to Ali.  Now a stop at Lowe’s AFTER the movie was in order.

We again went to the Cocunut Point theater, hoping to once again find a very empty theater.  Well it looks like a film as popular as The Dark Knight was a big enough draw to fill the seats.  The theater was almost full.  This room had seats that were paired up.  If you stowed the arm rest in the center it was like a big love seat almost, kind of cool.  So I was skeptical going in that the movie could come close to living up to the hype.  The recent super hero movies I have seen have missed the mark in my book, like Iron Man and Spider Man 3. They were good but not AS good as I expected. I basically HATED the last Batman movie three years ago and gave it a D rating, about as low as I could go.  I had a hard time believing this new flick could be nearly as good as many people have said.  Yea it has Heath Ledger in it who is now dead, but what else could make it interesting? I heard Howard Stern review it.  He said it was great as well, His biggest criticism is the girl that plays the love interest isn’t all that hot, surely not hot enough for Bruce Wayne.

Well I was amazed how much I liked this movie.  Heath Ledger was a FANTASTIC villain.  I never found myself being bored during the entire flick.  Yea Christian Bale still does the ridiculous voice change when he puts on the suit but I found myself enjoying everything else too much to care.  So what makes this so good in my book?  Well maybe because everything isn’t lollipops and bubblegum.  The hero doesn’t always save the day, something you rarely if ever see anymore in the movies.  There were several times I thought the film was winding up and I was surprised to see it was simply kicking off into another chapter.  That may be one of the few criticisms people could levy at the film, it’s long, nearly two and a half hours.  I truthfully am amazed that I liked this movie as much as I did considering it has the same actor playing the same character in the prior film that I rated so poorly.  What can I tell you, I thought it was fantastic. A+

After the movie I asked Ali’s opinion of the film.  She didn’t like it.  She said it was too dark.  She said she is tired of seeing movies that are all action and violence.  I told her it was funny because I remembered the last Batman movie she actually thought it was better than I did.  Now the shoe was reversed, I loved this one, she didn’t.  Maybe it appealed to the dark aspects of my personality where as Ali likes things bright and sunny.  Ali continued on complaining about only seeing movies that I like, mainly action movies.  I have addressed this with her before, explaining an action movie is enhanced by the theater experience, a romantic comedy is not.  Well the disagreement was not settled in any manner.

After the movie we went to Lowe’s and once again met with failure.  We had one of the employees there helping us look.  We expressed our frustration with Lowe’s not selling basic replacement parts for a tractor they sold 4 years ago.  Of course this guy had no control over what they stock but we bitched to him anyway.  So when we got home I hopped online and bought the belt I needed.  I may as not even bother looking at store anymore for tractor parts.  The belt hopefully will show up this week.  In the meantime we are hoping we can borrow the neighbor’s tractor to finish up.