Archives 2008

There were no big fireworks this “solo” weekend.  Actually just the opposite.  It was fine.  The biggest difference compared to when Ali is home is I had a lot more to do.  I kept busy most of the weekend doing various chores.

The body shop delivered the Camry to me as promised after work Friday.  I can’t tell you how blown away I am by their customer service.  It’s so rare nowadays.

I deemed Friday night as my drinking night.  It seems that my former drink of choice, Zima has vanished off the face of the earth.  I can’t seem to find it anywhere in my area anymore.  Along with good old fashioned beer, I have taken up drinking Smirnoff Ice things.  Well I found out that trying to get drunk on them isn’t much fun.  As I played WoW I drank a few of them.  I felt a little buzzed but more tired than anything.  Plus the fruity, sweet taste gets to be a little bit much after awhile.  I would have been better served to just drink beer.

On Saturday I got started on my long list of to do’s  Mid afternoon I took a break to go to Staples and Pinch A Penny.  I took a pool water sample to Pinch A Penny.  I was very frustrated with my pool water situation.  Even after double shocking the pool last week algae was once again forming.  Every week I am cleaning the filter, shocking the water and I can’t get away from the bottom of the pool getting a dull yellow-green haze to it. 

So anyway they test the water.  They ask me what I have been shocking it with.  I told them some granulated shock/clarifier that I buy at Home Depot.  They recommended that I stop using that and stick to the liquid chlorine they sell.  I also got some stuff designed to kill the algae.  They gave me a print out showing me all the pool numbers as well as instructions on how to treat it.  The alkalinity was a bit high too so I picked up some muriatic acid as well to bring that number down. I’m happy to report that at least so far, the plan seems to be working.  Right now the water looks as good as it has in a long time.

Saturday I sat down and watched Time Cop, a 14 year old Van Damme flick.  I saw it before but saw it was on Universal HD (one of my new favorite channels) so I had Tivo record it.  I enjoyed it once again.  It made me laugh in the film that was made in 1994, how it viewed 10 years into the future, 2004.  They depicted a world that had self driving cars, automated homes and futuristic laser-like guns.  The writers were a bit optimistic about how far technology would advance in that decade.

Spoiler Alert.  If you didn’t see the most recent Battlestar Galactica episode yet, skip the next 2 paragraphs.  I now fully realize why people love this show.  It is fantastic.  I’m sorry I jumped into it so late.  I am considering asking for the prior seasons on dvd for Xmas. Anyway, the premise of the series has been the fleet of Battlestar Galactica has been searching for Earth.  They have been hopelessly searching for years. Well through a miracle they actually find the way there which ironically involves cooperation with their arch enemy, the cylons.  The joy of finding earth is overwhelming, the crew of Galactica goes wild as they orbit the big beautiful blue planet.  The president tells Captain Odama that she wants him to be the first one to grab a handful of “Earth”.     

Cut to the next scene.  You see a hand scooping up some dirt and then a Geiger counter registering it’s radioactive properties.  The hand throws the dirt back to the ground in disgust.  The crew is on the surface of earth.  The shot pans to the various cast members with looks of disbelief and horror.  They pan to the horizon that shows the remains of a city, obviously destroyed by the effect of a nuclear bomb.  Yes, the planet they thought to be their salvation was destroyed by nuclear holocaust.  It was such a powerful scene. I think there is one episode left.  They have to reveal who the 5th and final cylon is.  Go to half.com and pick up the dvd sets.  I’m telling you, the only thing this series shares with the original cheesy, short-lived, series is it’s name alone.  The characters are compelling, the plot is stellar and the production is top notch.  It’s like watching a theater quality movie every week.  It’s one of my all time favorite shows.

My Sunday again had a lot of chores in it.  One of the things I did was dive down to the bottom of the pool to remove one of the pool drain covers.  I am so sick of the pool cleaner getting stuck on them.  At Pinch a Penny I saw replacement covers that looked to be a smooth dome which I think would be much more cleaner-friendly.  I wanted to take one of my old covers into the store to verify it will match up in size.  To perform the drain removal I used a screwdriver, a scuba mask and a 35 pound dumbbell.  I used the dumbbell to keep me anchored to the pool floor so I could remove the cover.  Otherwise I would have to try to flail my legs to keep myself down while trying to work the screwdriver, not a fun prospect.  My body seems to want to float.

I picked up Ali last night at the airport.  Before leaving I went around the property and cut flowers from various sources and put them in an empty Smirnoff bottle with water to take them along.  Ali laughed when she saw the container but I explained it was the best solution to transport the flowers there intact.  She said it was very thoughtful and she appreciated it.  She was very happy to be home.  I brought Nicki with on the trip and of course she was ecstatic to see her “mommy”.    Ali told me about her trip on the return drive home.  I was extremely tired by the time we got back.  It didn’t take long before I passed out in bed.  It was good to have Ali back home, the circle is once again complete.

My buddy at work gave me a radar detector that he unknowingly acquired from an ex-girlfriend of his.  He didn’t know if it worked or not but he didn’t want it.  I told him I would give it a try.  I’m typically not much of a speeder but it still would be helpful to have a heads up if radar/laser is in the vicinity.  As I was driving around over the weekend it went off a few times.  I plan to take it along on the trip to PA.

Speaking of the trip.  I determined that we pretty much HAVE to take the party van due to available space.  I don’t think there is simply anyway for me to jam all of the stuff I need to take for the trip and tournament in the Camry.  I have shelters, coolers, volleyball bags, chairs, our clothes, AV equipment, laptop, Nicki supplies and Randall’s stuff to accommodate.  It just won’t fit in the car.  I’m not looking forward to the gas costs but I do enjoy open highway driving in the van so I will just grit my teeth and bear it each time I stop at the pump.  We also are considering changing our travel plans.  Originally I was talking about living hella early Thursday morning and then picking up Randall at the airport on the way in Friday morning.  Now we are thinking about leaving Wednesday, driving a good chunk of the day and then after sleeping at a La Quinta, getting up to PA on late Thursday.  This will give us a chance to get the townhouse ready.  I’m sure Ali will want to wash the sheets and there will be food to be bought and other things to do I’m sure.  We also found out that we won’t be alone at the townhouse.  My sister Meghan is going to be coming down for the weekend from NYC and my brother Pat may also be coming in from Pittsburgh.  My niece has her first dance recital on Saturday and they would be coming to see it.  It will make for a full house but there is room to accommodate us all.

I called my dad yesterday for Father’s Day.  We sent him a card but I didn’t buy him a gift.  I sort of abandoned a lot of gift giving for dad in the past year or so.  There just isn’t much point  in buying him “stuff”, he doesn’t need it.  I was on the phone with him for awhile.  Much of the conversation was him talking about the various projects going on at the ranch in New Mexico.  He complained to me about the quality of help in TRC (Truth or Consequences) Much like Florida, it seems that people put little to no importance in actually doing what they tell you they will do.  They don’t call you back, they don’t show up and they think nothing of it.  Dad gets even more frustrated than I do when that shit happens.  I was on the phone with him for quite awhile, especially for me, probably close to 40 minutes.  It’s always good to talk to dad.  After hearing a lot of complaints, I asked him if he is still content living where he is living.  Without hesitation he said he was very content which is what matters.  I’m not sure how content my step mom is living in the middle of nowhere though.

I also was surprised to talk to my brother-in-law twice over the weekend.  The first time he called to say he wanted us to hook up to do something “fun” when they come to visit in August. He suggested deep sea fishing.  I told him I was not much of a fisherman, actually I am not at all a fisherman.  I threw out maybe hitting up the air boats instead.  The second time he called to ask my opinion about what sort of cardio equipment he should buy.  He already has a treadmill and elliptical machine.  He said he was considering a recumbent bike because he can’t stand doing cardio on the other machines.  I told him I recommended a cardio machine where you are supporting your body weight as they are normally more beneficial.  I said a recumbent bike was probably the easiest of all cardio machines.  I pointed out though that any cardio machine can be effective if you crank the difficulty level high enough.  The important thing is doing it consistently if you want to get any results from it. 

Speaking of cardio, I will be doing my last 300 before PA today.  I have laid off the running pre-Rumble, just to be safe.

I just cancelled our US Airways credit card.  I have had it since 99 but for some reason or another getting the notice they were going to ding us with the annual $90 fee set me off this time.  It’s stupid to pay an annual fee nowadays for a credit card.  I guess their logic is since you get “free airline miles” it is worth it.  To me to pay an extra $90 to have a seat on a shitty airline only after spending 10’s of thousands of dollars isn’t such a great deal.  F them.

I am still in the midst of ebay disputes, first with the asshole that sold me the shitty hard drive and I am about to open another claim against the guy that sold me the pool drain covers that weren’t made for Hayward cleaners.  The pool guy told me to send back the covers and he would refund the money, simple enough.  I sent them back May 21st and he STILL has not refunded the money.  I have sent various correspondences to him along the way, politely asking when I could expect the money to be refunded.  Some of the requests he ignored.  The ones he did respond to kept promising it would be refunded “soon”.  Well the last promise was it should definitely be refunded last week and of course, it hasn’t.  I sent him an email yesterday saying my patience was over, 3 weeks is plenty of time to issue a refund in Paypal (it takes 15 seconds to do).  I said that if I don’t see the refund by the end of today in my account I would be opening up a Paypal claim against him.  I have used ebay for years with hardly an issue.  It’s ironic that in the span of a few weeks I would be dealing with two similar situations with irresponsible sellers. 

The hard drive guy disputed my paypal claim so now Payapl is “deciding the outcome”  I don’t know what there is to decide, the drive was returned to him, he hasn’t refunded the money, end of case.  If for some reason Paypal doesn’t refund the money I will be on the warpath.  I pity whatever customer service rep I get on the phone.

So last night I open up the latest bill from Directv.  I see that in addition to the local channels I am now being billed an additional $10 a month for HD ACCESS.  Well I thought it was lame to be billed 10 a month just to get my local channels in HD so I figured I would call and bitch.  I didn’t really expect to get anywhere since I already had a bare bones programming deal that is typically not available.  I don’t have a “package”, just the local channels and the Sunday Ticket for the Eagles games.  If you called up and tried to get that from them as a new customer they would tell you to pound sand.

So I call up and get a young sounding girl on the phone.  I make my pitch that I thought it was dumb that I was being charged 10 a month just for hd on the local channels. You could tell she was working off her script as she dealt with me.  I told her that all I really cared about was getting the Sunday Ticket in HD.  Then she springs another bomb on me.  “If you want the Sunday Ticket in HD you have to buy the “Superfan” package” What????  I ask how much it costs, an additional $99 on TOP on the $250 or so I already pay for the Sunday Ticket!! 

Well now I did have a legitimate thing to be pissed off about.  I reiterated to the girl that I didn’t think it was right to be charged 120 a year for the HD access PLUS another 100 if I want the Sunday Ticket in HD, that’s bullshit.  The girl basically said she was sorry but that was the way it worked.  Well I could tell I was at the end with this clerk so I pulled out the obligatory “can I please talk to your supervisor?” deal.  I was on hold for a minute or so and then another woman answers the phone and identifies herself as a supervisor.

I gave a brief review of my gripe and initially I got the same response.  The woman said that I wasn’t getting just the HD locals with the HD access package.  She said there are about 20 “older” HD channels I get.  I told her I didn’t care about or need any of those channels.  All I really want is the Sunday Ticket in HD.  Then she offered me a partial resolution.  She said she could take the HD access off my account and add on the Superfan stuff.  Doing so would wind up being just about a wash since the HD access was 120 a year and the hd football add on was 99 bucks.  It seemed like a fair deal to me.  I double checked with her to make sure that the changes she was making would definitely allow me to still watch the Sunday Ticket in HD.  She assured me it would.  I guess I will find out for sure in a couple months.  Man I would have been pissed when I flipped on the first Eagles came and saw measly standard definition drawing across the screen…  

I just paid for the repair on the Camry bumper.  We took it to a body shop owned by the daughter of one of the guys in the running club.  When I pulled up I immediately saw the car sitting there, looking like it was on a dealer’s lot.  Not only did they do a flawless job repairing the damage on the bumper, they did a total car makeover, scrubbing it from top to bottom and even dressing the tires.  It looked great!

Since Ali is out of town, I didn’t have an easy way to get both the car and the truck back to my place.  The owner said she and her husband drive by our street on the way home at night.  She offered to drop the car off at my house tonight.  I could hardly believe the offer and I initially declined, saying I didn’t want to put her through that sort of trouble.  She assured me it was no trouble at all.  Ok fine, go for it.  How awesome is that?

While I was there I had them take a look at the Tacoma.  The paint on the top surfaces of it has been baked from the intense Florida sun.   The guy looked it over and immediately said it had been painted before, something I was unaware of.  He explained to me the detail they go through when painting a vehicle.  He said they could probably get the truck looking sharp again for a couple grand.  I have been considering getting it painted for awhile.  The truck is a 99 but still has under 90k miles and hasn’t given me hardly a hiccups worth of trouble since I owned it.  I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t get 150-200k out of it.

Surprisingly the chain of events after Ali got hit at the intersection have been amazingly hassle free.  The insurance claim was handled quickly and the ensuing repair exceeded my expectations as well.  That just doesn’t happen very often…

We have started our summer wet season a bit early this year which is a good thing.  Last night we had some more strong storms.  On the drive home I was mired in traffic due to an accident.  Then when I got closer to the house, two of the intersections had dead traffic lights.  I was afraid power was out at the house.  I was relieved when the garage door went up.

The storm continued for awhile.  At one point there was a huge blast of thunder that rattled the house.  Nicki came scrambling into the bedroom.  A little later I was up in the office and I jumped after an even bigger blast rocked the house.  This one was real close as there was almost no gap between the light and thunder.  A few minutes after that there was a stream of police and emergency vehicles heading up our road. A bit later I saw utility trucks heading the same direction.  The lightning hit something obviously.

The weekend has no big plans.  I have stuff to do around the house.  I think I will wait till I am off Wednesday to mow the grass so it will split the difference of being gone the following weekend.  Next week at this time we should be close to the Philly airport on our way to pick up Randall, cool stuff.

Google Street View is an amazing project Google is undertaking to map out real street views all across the country.  They just got done mapping out our area.  You can punch in most addresses in our area and get a 360 degree image of the location.  It’s amazing.  I’d love to know how in the world they do it.  They must have some special vehicles with panoramic cameras that drive the country 24×7.  It’s really cool.  Want to see what the government complex I work at looks like from the street?  Click here. You can even see my street/house if you know the address.

My first night alone was uneventful.  We got some strong rain which probably dumped at least an inch on our house which was welcomed.  I did some laundry, ate dinner and then played WoW and some Wii with Charlie later.  I wrapped up my exciting evening by watching The Ultimate Fighter.

Man my biceps are wiped.  Every other week I do this ass kicking bicep routine, it goes like this. I take up position by the barbell tree that has preset barbells ranging in weight from 110 to 20 pounds.  I start with the 90 pound barbell and grind out 10 reps, then I rack it and immediately pick up the 80 pounder and do another 10, rack and pick up the 70, repeat all the way down to 20 pounds.  The object is to go from set to set with basically no rest.  It is extremely difficult.  The biceps are a small muscle so they fatigue rather quickly.  By the time I get done I have knocked out 80 repetitions in a little more than 5 minutes.  My arms are rubber at that point.  If I was a beast I would be able to do the entire tree, starting at 110 and going to 20. It gives me something to shoot for I guess.  the pain equates to some results.  I have noticed since I started doing this 6 months or so ago my arms are bulking up a bit.

If you some days my daily entry seems kind of lame, I would recommend scrolling down the left hand column and checking out the “A Year Ago” entries.  I often will flip back to them and reread them.  Some make me laugh, some make me cry, some make me scratch me head and wonder WTF was I thinking…

Last night while I was making Nicki’s supper, Ali was emptying the dishwasher.  She was over by the small cabinet that we keep all of Tuki’s stuff in when I heard her gasp which is never good.  “It’s filled with bugs!!!”  I immediately come over and see a number of small winged bugs.  We have seen them before, Ali said she thought they were called “grain moths”

  We start ripping stuff out of the cabinet trying to identify what they had infested.  I pick up a brand new, sealed bag of Tuki’s ‘Nuts n Nuggets’ and see the little bastards inside of it.  A quick observation solved the mystery.  Some genius at the pet store poked a hole in the bag to hang it on a hook for display.  Unfortunately they poked it below the sealed portion, allowing easy access for the bugs.  It also explains how they exited the bag and took over the inside of the cabinet.  It was a tedious process cleaning it up.

  I brought out the Dyson to help suck up the winged bugs while Ali pulled everything out of the cabinet.  I returned the bag of bugs today to the store and got it exchanged.  I am pretty sure if I wanted to be a prick and make a scene I could have scored a gift card or something for our trouble but I didn’t.  I did however make sure the replacement bag was bug free.

I was sad to hear that Jim McKay died the other day although he was certainly old enough to do so, 86 I think.  I always liked Jim McKay.  I was a big Wide World of Sports watcher growing up which was primarily hosted by Jim.  He just had a demeanor and speaking style I found enjoyable and reassuring.  The last time I saw him on TV was either one or two Olympics ago when they drug him back out in front of the camera.  He was already in pretty sad shape then.  I remember thinking I wished he would have just let well enough alone so I wouldn’t have to see the man I grew up watching transformed into a frail old man, hardly able to get out of his own way.   Regardless, Jim was a great broadcaster that I will always remember.  Rest in peace.

This morning on the way to dropping off Ali at the airport I noticed that the odometer was approaching one of those magical moments when all the numbers are the same.  So once the screen read all 8’s I was ready with the camera phone.  I know this is extremely interesting and compelling, please hold down your applause.

So like I said, Ali is on her way to PA, returning on Sunday.  Nicki and I will hold down the fort just fine I’m sure.

Well my predicted success with the neighbor’s Tivo was premature.  The drive I copied an image to did not boot the Tivo.  I threw the drive from my Tivo into his just to verify it was a drive problem.  It booted just fine from my hard drive.  I have some more research to do.  The drive in my Tivo is larger than his drive.  Evidently there are additional complications when trying to downsize your Tivo image.

I have neglected to mention that the latest Mars lander, Phoenix successfully landed on Mars at the end of May.  I check out the NASA website almost daily to see what is going on with the lander.  It’s pretty amazing stuff to me for NASA to be controlling a device 43 million miles away.  I have a Vista desktop widget at home that shows the current Mars weather as measured by the lander.  Currently the high temperatures during the day are a balmy -25 F, the lows are -112 F.  I’ll be sure to pack the long johns if I get to visit the red planet.

I get so annoyed reading idiotic people’s comments in the local e-newspaper.  I don’t know why I subject myself to it.  Today I found this comment in regards to a story about high gas prices particularly annoying and ignorant…

“conservation is the tool of dictators. oil is bubbling up all over the earth but some weak minded people are convinced that humans are destroying the planet. there are termites that make more carbon dioxcide than most countrys. cattle effluants are more of a problem than the cars in Florida.”

Instead of replying with one of my personal rants, I chose to use a great quote I remembered seeing awhile back.

A weak minded individual – “Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten…”

F him… idiot.

Ali read my brilliant idea for national health care and actually was impressed.  She thought it was a great idea.  She suggested I forward it to Obama.  I laughed at her idea but then later I did exactly that.  I went to his senate page and pasted in my blog entry almost verbatim.  It can’t hurt.

Yesterday as I was getting changed for the gym I realized that I stupidly forgot to pack socks.  So I had a decision to make, to wear sneakers with no socks, which I don’t like doing or wearing my tan work socks with little diamonds on them.  I decided on the latter.  I pulled them way down so little more than the top of the sock was visible and bunched up the rest of it inside the sneaker.  It was a bit annoying having the socks bunched up in my shoe but I didn’t catch anyone giving me strange looks so maybe no one noticed. 

Last night I was doing more testing on my Bose system.  I turned it on when I got home to time exactly how long it would stay on.  After 20 minutes the sound cut out.  I turned the unit off and back on a few times.  It would play for a little bit and then immediately cut out.  I decided I would call Bose again since it was now exhibiting the problem.  I kept turning it on, wait for it to cut out and then turn it off and on again, I did it three or four times.  As I was on hold I noticed that the unit was still working longer than the minute or so it had been doing.  I hung up the phone and let it on.  It kept on working from that point on.  I left it on for the 45 minutes or so that Ali did her ballet dvd workout and it worked just fine.  There must just be an electrical component in the head unit that is just flaky.

 Ironically after I have spent a decent amount of time digging into my HD Tivo, my old neighbor told me his Tivo Series 2 unit had died.  It is a lifetime subscription model so getting it fixed makes sense.  Apparently his hdd in the unit died.  Lucky for him I still have my old Series 2 that I pulled out of commission.  I am in the process of pulling an image from my Tivo using WinMFS to place on a new hard drive for his unit.  If all goes as planned he should be back in business shortly.

 Awhile back I posted a link to a site, felonspy.com, that supposedly identified felons that lived around you.  After I posted it I edited the post saying I thought it may be suspect since I could not verify any of names/addresses they listed.  Well Ali sent me this which confirmed my suspicions.  It’s all a big joke.

I knew that since I missed my 300 workout last week that I would pay for it this week.  It seems like somebody raised the toll.  I was sucking major wind and had to take longer breaks than I would like to.

On my way back from the gym I came up with what I thought was a brilliant national health care plan.  Everybody would have the option to be included in a national health care plan with minimal or no costs. But there is a catch, to be covered you have to have a BMI (body mass index) under a certain level and you can not be a smoker or drug user.  I think this would be a fantastic thing.  It would reward people for being healthy!  People that choose to willingly abuse their body through the abuse of food, cigarettes or drugs are welcome to do so.  However these individuals open themselves up for truckloads of additional health issues.  They can continue with their existing private health care plan that they must pay for.  But if you want a free ride on the government plan, you have to do your part towards minimizing the risk taken on by the insurer.  Reward people for working towards a healthy lifestyle, what a concept!