Archives 2008

Unreal…. here is the story behind this horrible picture.

Friday afternoon and all of Monday I was at the tax sale.  It wasn’t much fun.  They keep the thermostat in the conference room at a ridiculously low 71 degrees so everyone was freezing.  I prepared for the cold temps Monday by wearing long sleeves.  Well wouldn’t you know it, the AC in the entire building broke mid-morning.  The temps in the huge building soared quickly getting up to the mid-80’s.  It was miserable.  I and everyone else in there was sweating our asses off.  I’m glad I am out of there today.

So let me back track to the weekend.  I never managed to find a partner to play the tournament on Saturday.  I thought about it repeatedly as I was out on the mower instead.  It would have been pretty brutal playing conditions, it felt like mid-summer with high temps and high humidity. I wanted to get most of the house chores done so we could go see the Indiana Jones flick.

We got cleaned up and headed out to the movie, once again making the road trip to Coconut Point so we could watch the film in comfort with hopefully not many others around.  Once again the place was nearly empty which I didn’t expect but I was happy to see.  The biggest negative about the Muvica theater is they submit you to nearly 25 minutes of solid commercials and previews before the film.  It really is annoying, especially considering we paid $9.50 a head to see a 4 o’clock showing.

I was a bit nervous about seeing the flick.  I love the Indiana Jones series.  I had heard the negative grumblings about this film.  I didn’t want the last in the series to be the worst.  For the first half of the film or so I felt good about it.  The film to that point was entertaining without being too ridiculous.  Then it just got stupid.  For me they could have left Shia LeBouf out of the film, he was just annoying.  The action at that point crossed over to the lunacy category.  I think the description I heard of “Indiana Jones meets Close Encounters of a Third Kind” is pretty accurate.  The script was written by George Lucas.  Man talk about a guy living off of past successes.  He hasn’t written a good movie in the past two decades.

On the positive side I think Harrison Ford did a good job of reclaiming his role as Indiana Jones even with him being old enough to collect social security. For the most part, he seemed like the same character, just 20 years older. The action and special effects are top notch but that almost comes to be expected nowadays, it’s so commonplace.  I’d give the movie a B probably which is a disappointment for sure.

On Sunday morning I went to Group Power with Ali at the gym.  I have done the class a few times before.  It’s a class where you use light weights while doing very high numbers of repetitions.  There also is very minimal rest as you bounce around from body part to body part.  The catch is you can make the class significantly easier or harder based on how much weight you use with the exercises. My problem is I don’t do the class regularly enough to know how much weight I should realistically be using.  In the past I used the weight other people were using as a judge.  I would see what they used and try to do significantly more.  Well that was a mistake.

This time I was more conservative in my weight usage.  I wasn’t happy seeing some women using more weight than me on certain exercises but I justified it by remembering they are regulars.  I’m sure if I did the class two or three times a week I would be using a lot more weight.  The girl teaching the class wasn’t what you would imagine an instructor of such a class to be.  She was very chubby.  You could tell she was working harder than the instructor I had seen before. However she did the entire routine and used more weight than me on several exercises all while barking out the routine, I was impressed.  Even though I tried to be conservative with my weights I still managed to fry my legs.  Even today they are still so sore that I am postponing doing a 300.

Ali was gone most of the day Sunday.  While she was gone I finished up the housework and then sat down and watched another movie that Ali wasn’t interested in watching, The Brave One.  I roughly knew the plot of the flick ahead of time, basically Jodie Foster turns vigilante after some punks beat up her and her fiance, in the process killing her fiance as well as abducting her dog.  Jodie snaps and goes on a killing spree, killing a bunch of people that all deserved it.  It was very well done and had a surprise ending that I didn’t expect.  I’d give it an A-.

Late Sunday night I got a call from our neighbor saying he had a family emergency and had to head out.  He asked if we could watch Zoe which I agreed to of course.  The interaction between Nicki and Zoe is funny.  You can tell that after awhile Nicki gets tired of sharing her food, toys and attention with another dog.  It was no more apparent than this morning when I was preparing lunch.  Part of my normal routine in the morning is when I make my sandwich with lunch meat, I take two or three slices over to Nicki’s plate, tear them up and then she devours it in a few seconds. 

Well this morning I was getting the lunch meat out and Zoe was by my side, hoping to score scraps of food.  Well Nicki had no interest in Zoe moving in on her lunch meat score.  She walked over to Zoe, growled and barked menacingly at her, warning her that lunch meat was OFF LIMITS.  I yelled at Nicki to knock it off.  I went over to her plate and started putting the lunch meat down.  Instead of waiting until I was finished putting it down like she normally does, Nicki instead started scarfing down the meat as I was placing it to prevent any possibility of Zoe getting a single meaty morsel.  I had to sneak a couple small pieces to Zoe on the down low. 

There is a bad brush fire out in our area that so far has torched more than 200 acres and taken several homes with it.  It’s not close enough to be a threat to us but we could see and smell the smoke from it.  Much of Golden Gate Estates is covered in pine trees.  Many of the homes are carved into these heavily wooded lots.  These homes are very vulnerable in a fire situation.  It was one of the reasons Ali and I were happy when we found an open lot to build our place on.  Some of the pictures from the fire are pretty scary.  There is a good chance this fire was set/caused by a human being as there have been no storms with associated lightning recently.

Last night I was very busy once again.  The first couple hours after I got home I spent trying to continue work on my bearing upgrade for the Roomba which was a failure.  I lost patience with the process of widening the plastic holes and decided to use a dremel to assist me.  Using the dremel caused the holes to get out of round.  I shit canned the project, angry with myself for not taking some time to research how to properly enlarge the holes.

The baker’s cabinet that Ali ordered arrived yesterday in three large boxes.  We spent the rest of the night working on that.  We got the base of it assembled and in place.  All that is left is to put the top hutch section together.  It looks nice and fits in with our other stuff pretty well.  Ali is excited about it since she spent a lot of time trying to find something that fit her “vision”.

I scored tickets for the Phillies yesterday.  The Sunday after the Rumble, Randall, my brother and my niece are going to go down to watch them play the Angels.  Originally I was going to buy them through the Phillies web site but the only 4 tickets available were high up in the stadium off to the third base side.  I did some digging on Stub Hub.  Todd had mentioned it would be cool to maybe be in the outfield or down the lines where foul balls or home run balls are a possibility.  I found 4 tickets in the left field corner in the lower level.  Yea they were more expensive but I don’t figure to be going to many Phillie games in the future, it was worth it to get some decent seats to me.  It should be a fun time.  Ali is content to chill out with Nicki at my dad’s place while we go to the game.

The weekend will be busy enough. There is grass to mow, a house to clean.  I am in the process of upgrading my Tivo HD hard drive from the factory 160 gig to a more generous 500 gig.  This time I don’t expect any technical snafu’s as I am using a drive that is designed for DVR use. I’d love to go see Indiana Jones sometime during the weekend but I don’t think it is going to work out since Ali will be gone a good chunk of Sunday.  

For the first time since I have lived here they are having a beach vball tournament right here in Naples this weekend.  Can you believe that I am not playing??  For years I have been driving hour after hour to go to tournaments around the state, wishing for something to be held close to me.  It finally has happened and I’m not gonna get to play.  Randall has something else going on.  I asked Jeremy as well but he expressed no interest in travelling.  I even sent out a general plea for a partner on a Florida vball email list but it looks like the moderator never got around to releasing it.  Oh well.

 I have to go back out to the tax sale this afternoon and Monday morning, yay. 

Another top former Bush insider spills the beans on just how corrupt and dishonest this fear mongering, PR spinning, piece of shit administration is.  http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080529/pl_nm/bush_book_dc_11

Yesterday I was at the county tax certificate sale.  It is being held at a new location this year in the school administration building.  This building was constructed several years ago and has been nicknamed “The Taj Mahal”.  This sarcastic name is due to the extravagance of the facility.  Much of the local citizens scoff at the building as a testament to reckless, senseless spending that the school district has become famous for.  Well after stepping foot inside I can attest to it’s title.

Everything was spotless.  When I stepped into the conference room it felt like I was instead walking into the U.N.  Wow education evidently is big business.  I couldn’t believe how nice it all was. 

The tax sale is an annual event our office holds to sell certificates to unpaid taxes.  People that bid on these certificates stand to make as much as 18% on their money.  It was interesting to be there for the first couple hours or so, after that it became pretty much of a drag.  The sale goes on for four more days yet, thank goodness I am back at the office now.

So on Tuesday I got a call from Ali, she uttered the words you never want to hear “I was in an accident…”  she quickly clarified to say it wasn’t serious but someone bumped into her from behind while she was stopped at an intersection.  Instead of my first question being “Are you all right?” (which I later apologized for), my first words were “Was it a f’ing Mexican??!!”  It was a reflex reaction based on my getting rear ended twice already at intersections by mexicans since we moved to Florida.  If it was a mexican it opens up all sorts of additional complications since most of them don’t have insurance and you may as well flip a coin if they have a valid driver’s license or not.  Well it wasn’t a Mexican that hit her, it was a middle aged woman.  Her explanation was she was on her cell phone, not paying attention, saw the left turn green arrow flash up, and inadvertently interpreted that as a green to go ahead.  By the time she realized her f up she had already bumped into Ali.

Well I was pissed of course.  The roads down here are filled with so many bad drivers ranging from illegal aliens driving rolling piles of junk that can’t see over the wheel , old people that can hardly see the road, to the idiots that have a cell phone permanently super glued to their heads.  The woman felt bad about the accident that was 100% her fault.  Ali asked me what sort of info she should get.  I told her to get everything she could, including the woman’s license plate and driver license number.  When Ali got home that night I inspected the damage.  There was some white residue on the bumper that seems to wipe off as well as several small chips in the paint on the bumper from where the woman’s front license plate bracket hit our bumper. 

It’s not horrible but I still would like to get it fixed if the woman’s insurance company is cooperative.  If I would be forced to go through our insurance it wouldn’t be worth the time since the repair would probably be less than what our deductible is.  Whatever the outcome is, it will likely require dealing with more annoying shit.   I can hardly wait.

Tuesday night I sat down and watched No Country for Old Men.  It was another one of those films that Ali didn’t want to watch.  After viewing it I agreed that she probably wouldn’t have liked it due to some of the violence to animals and tons of violence to human beings that is throughout the movie.  It’s too bad though, if she could get by that she would have seen what was a very compelling flick.  The film is something you don’t see much of anymore, something that relies on great acting and plot to entertain the viewer instead of using CGI effects and explosions. 

The lead bad guy in this film is one of the creepiest bad guys I EVER have seen in a movie.  You have to see it to believe just how dark this character is.  It has some name actors in it, including Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson.  The film is not predictable at all, I enjoyed every minute of it. 

Ali came home as I was watching the last half hour or so.  She tried to engage me in some conversation as I was watching it but she quickly realized I wasn’t interested in talking, I was that into the film.  I see why it was up for Academy Awards.  It paints a pretty gloomy picture of the world which sadly seems to be pretty accurate.  As long as you are ok with with seeing lots of people bite the dust, I would highly recommend the flick.  It gets an A at least, maybe deserving of A+. 

I have been so tired the last few days.  I have been asleep by 10pm the last couple nights but still find myself drop dead beat by the time I get home from work.  It sucks.  My latest after work productivity project involves converting a spare brush deck I have for my 535 Roomba to use ball bearings to seal off the gear case to prevent hair from getting into the gear box and wrecking the gears.  It’s a  bit of a tedious process that requires some precise shaving and sanding of a couple surfaces to accommodate the bearings.  It’s a spare deck so if I f it up it isn’t a huge deal.

So I left work early so I could be home for the satellite installer.  It was one of those annoying time window deals where the guy could be there anywhere between 12 and 4.  When I got home I saw that the hard drive from that jack ass on ebay had arrived so that gave me something to work on while I waited for the installer to show up.  Somewhere around 2:30 I called Directv to verify we were still a go for the install since I hadn’t heard anything yet.  They said it was still a go and the installer was not considered late until 4:01. Ok whatever, I knew where this was heading.

So while I waited I worked on getting the 500 gb drive working with my HD Tivo.  Doing so meant I had to crack open the Tivo, pull out the existing 160 gb hard drive and temporarily hook it and the 500 gb drive to my system.  I didn’t have any extra SATA cables so I had to disconnect my existing drives and boot a special linux cd that has software on it to manipulate tivo hard drives.  If I had extra cables I could have completed the process while booted up in Windows using WinMFS.

So I boot the cd, get a prompt, execute a one line command that “marries” the two drives together and that should be it.  I take the drives out, install the original back in the Tivo, the 500 gigger in the external enclosure and hook everything back up.  I fire up the Tivo and hold my breath.  It starts the boot process and I figure I am in the clear.  However after a few minutes it became obvious that something was up, it never finished booting.  I shut it off and tried again, and again.  No dice, it wouldn’t come up.

Well I was pissed.  Of course it seemed fitting that the drive I bought from this asshole would be giving me problems.  Well I was trying to think of alternative plans of action.  I came up with one.  I could REPLACE the internal 160 with the 500.  So I once again pull the drives apart, slap them in my pc and perform another one line command, this time to copy all of the contents of the old drive to the new drive and expand the available space at the same time.  This process takes longer, in my case about an hour.  In the meantime I was looking up more info about Tivo HDD upgrades.  They recommend that you only use drives that are designed for AV use since they are engineered to run cooler and quieter while being able to withstand the stress of continuous writes to the drive.  The drive I was trying to use was not this sort of drive.

Somewhere around 3:20 or so I got a call from the installer, Enrique, telling me he was still finishing up his prior job but he should be done soon.  Ok great.  Well he didn’t show up until about 4:45.  We have been in the middle of our normal summer drought.  Wouldn’t you know that when it finally decides to rain a bit, it is just before the satellite installer shows up.

Enrique pulls up in his beat up old Ford full size pick up.  He apologizes for being late.  He says he would wait around to see if the rain stopped.  He asked if maybe if the rain didn’t stop if he could come back tomorrow.  I told him that wouldn’t work out well and that the rain would probably stop soon.  I told him that I took a half day off of work for this so I would like to get it done now instead of later.  Luckily the rain let up.

So I found myself outside hanging out with Enrique while he worked, he sort of seemed like he enjoyed the company.  Just like the Comcast installer, I learned a lot about the guy as he worked.  He owned a landscaping business that catered to home builders.  He was the one that would come in and lay down the sod and plant the trees and stuff for new homes as they were built.  He said his business was pretty big, at it’s height he had four full crews working for him.  However when the building industry hit a brick wall he got blindsided.  He lost everything.  He had to lay off all of his workers, lost all of his equipment and the business itself.  He said he was owed roughly 300k by various builders but he expected to see none of it since most of these builders are out of business themselves.  As a result Enrique had to fall back to working a shitty job as a satellite installer. 

He said that when he had his own business he often would only work 4 or 5 days a week and normally wrap up his days by mid-afternoon.  As an installer he is routinely working 7 days a week.  He gets paid per install and he needs the money badly so he takes whatever jobs he can.  It sounded pretty shitty, I felt bad for the guy.  After the rain stopped the sun came back out and heated things right back up.  Enrique’s shaved head was pouring sweat.  I gave him three bottles of water to drink while he was there. 

When he started to rip down the old dish he didn’t know that I planned to give the old hardware to a buddy of mine.  He wasn’t being very gentle with the old dish and bent up the shaft and mounting foot a bit before I told him I wanted to keep it.   He apologized and told me he had a spare new dish of this sort in his truck that he would give to me, wow, that’s nice. 

Setting up the new dish took a little while.  It is bigger than the old dish and points up at a steeper angle so it was mounted lower on the wall.  As he worked I also worked at cleaning up the residual cable, parts and fasteners from the old install.  Enrique took me by surprise when told me he had a spare HD dish in his truck that he would sell me for $50 if I wanted it.  He said he normally sells them for $100.  I had no use for it so I politely declined but I felt sort of bad since I had already heard about his financial hardships.  I knew the guy was just trying to snag an extra few bucks.

As he was getting close to finishing the dish part of the install I got a phone call from a frustrated Ali.  Friday was also the day that the Toyota dealer was supposed to fix up the Camry with four new tires, a free alignment and fix the squeaky console.  We agreed ahead of time to get the car there early so they could get right to work on it and not be pressed for time.  Well it was shortly before 6 and Ali was sitting there, waiting.  Even though the car had been there all day long, they somehow were unable to have it ready to go quite yet.  Although I appreciate the deal I was getting, their repeated inability to finish work on time left yet more of a bad taste in my mouth.  By the time Ali got home the satellite installer was getting close to done.

The HD receiver is huge compared to the old box I had.  We hooked it up and fired it up.  I was relieved that it appeared to get good signal.  It downloaded some updates and after a call to DirecTV by Enrique I was up and running.  The picture looked great as I would expect it to.  I thanked Enrique for sticking around and getting it installed.  He had a long drive back to Cape Coral.

I returned my attention to my Tivo hdd upgrade.  The copy from the old drive to the new drive finished and I was excited when the Tivo booted normally with the 500 gb drive installed into it.  I was proud that I found a way to make use of the 500 gb drive, although it wasn’t quite as I envisioned it going.  I did notice that the Seagate drive was noticeably louder than the Western Digital drive it replaced.  I figured that was because it was a “normal” drive.  Well later  I tried out the Tivo and noticed the picture was stalling and skipping, a sign of hdd issues.  Son of a bitch!  I rebooted the thing and still had the same issue so I unplug the unit, rip it apart and throw the original drive back into it.  I noticed the 500 gig drive was hot, hotter than I would expect it to be and much warmer than the original drive when I pulled it out.

So my plan changed once again.  I would use the 500 gig drive as an external unit connected to my server.  I would use it to store my large collection of avi’s and music.  I threw the drive back into the external enclosure and hooked it to my server.  It recognized it and I started a full format on it.  Formatting 500 gig takes awhile so I figured I would check back on it in the morning.  For the Tivo, I went online to buy.com and got a good deal on a WD drive that is meant for AV use.  I will use that to install the internal drive and not worry about an external unit.

So the next morning I check in on the external drive to verify the format finished.  It was stuck at 99%, weird.  When I refreshed the view it changed the status of the drive to UNREADABLE.  I felt the external drive enclosure and again it was VERY hot.  Shit!  It seems that the asshole seller’s wishes that the drive die on me had come true.  Well I angrily disconnected the drive and immediately hopped on my pc to email the guy.  I told him the drive had obvious problems.  I gave him the choice of me sending the drive back to him and him refunding the money voluntarily or me skipping the formalities and just filing a Paypal dispute against him which would put a ding on his Paypal account, similar to the ding I already placed on his ebay account.  He sent me back this eloquent email.

well since I am so stupid I guess send it back.  No, the drive left here 100% operational and it’s called karma.  you get what you give.  Even now when you are asking what to do you insult me by again questioning my integrity.  Send the drive back and when i get it you will get your money.  I’m sick of this situation and all of ebay.  so i want all transactions cleared up as a Paypal claim will hold me to this crap site for a month or so.

I just wanted the money back so I didn’t reply back with anything sarcastic, just that I simply would ship the drive back on Tuesday.  I will use the money towards the replacement drive.

I had a long but manageable list for the weekend.  Most of it was vehicle related items.  I wanted to fix the rear view mirror on the van that fell off, change the oil and the oil plug on the van to hopefully address the leaking problem it has and wash all three vehicles.  I tackled the van first.  The mirror replacement went just fine and the oil change did as well.  It appears that the oil plug does no longer leak which is a big relief.

Washing and vacuuming all of the vehicles took a good chunk of the afternoon to finish but I didn’t mind it.  I find it somewhat relaxing.  By the time I was done they all looked significantly better, especially the van after I scrubbed off the mildew that was forming on the less sunny side.  Saturday night we stayed in and watched National Treasure 2.  I had heard some good things about it.  The first one was ok, I thought maybe this one was better.  It was more of the same for me.  The movie is filled with Nicholas Cage making impossible conclusions from various clues in between escaping near death after near death situation without batting an eye.  It was ok, nothing great. I’d give it a B or B-.

We had knocked out pretty much the entire list on Saturday which was a good feeling for me, having two relatively care free days is cool.  On Saturday I threw the pool heater on to raise the temp from 81 to 88 or 89 so Ali would be brave enough to venture into it.  Because of the warm temps outside it only took a few hours for the heater to bring the temp up those 7 or 8 degrees.  We actually went in and used the pool all three days of the weekend, it was quite nice.  Ali really would like to get solar heating for the pool so we can keep it warm without having to watch the electric meter spinning off it’s base.

Ali and I sometimes get into disagreements about getting stuff done around the house.  Normally it is because I don’t quite understand why she claims certain things take so long.  Part of that misunderstanding is my ability to knock out a ton of chores in a short period of time just by being diligent in my actions.  When Ali went to spinning class on Sunday I put on a demonstration of my skills.  She left the house about 8:40 or 8:45 and returned a little after 11.  In those couple hours I did the following:

-Hooked up the air compressor in the garage and used it to assist in cleaning all three of the Roombas
– Put away the various AV junk that was scattered around the kitchen counter and put it away
– cleaned all the kitchen counters
– went out to the garden, pulled out the dead corn plants and weeded it
– sprayed down the orchard with pesticide oil
– swept the utility room and kitchen with the shop vac
– stripped the bed and threw the sheets in the washer
– removed the 500 gig drive from it’s enclosure and packed it back up for shipping to the asshole
–  empty the dishwasher
– a couple other things I can’t recall

Anyway when I go on these runs of productivity I guess I expect it to be some sort of example of what can be done in a short amount of time.  When Ali got back I proudly fired off my list of accomplishments to which she was impressed.  I don’t know if she is actually impressed or just says that to appease me.  I don’t think she was taking any notes.

Sunday morning I called up my mom and asked her if she wanted to go out to eat with us.  We had a $100 gift card to use up.  At first mom asked why we wouldn’t want to just go ourselves but I fired back that we have more fun when she is with.  She couldn’t say no to that so she agreed to come, we picked her up around 5 so we could avoid any rush.  The plan worked out well, the restaurant wasn’t full at all.

We had a nice dinner with mom talking about various things.  One of the things that came up was my speaking issue.  Mom’s theory is that I have spent so much time communicating non-verbally (email, IM, etc…) that I forgot how to talk.  I assured her that that wasn’t it.  It was ironic trying to verbalize what my problem with verbalizing is.  I told her it is almost like a stutter without the stuttering.  Instead I run words together or tail off as I talk all without thinking about it.  I explain how often while I am speaking I get hung up while I try to think of word that I should know or as I try to unwind the mental rat nest of words in my head in the middle of trying to spit out a sentence.  I told her how frustrating it is for me.  It makes me feel like a f’in idiot and as a result the frustration sometimes make the problem even worse.  Mom told me how everyone has issues like that from time to time.  My problem is it feels like it happens all the time.

We did a good job of spending all of the gift card using alcohol and deserts to pump up the bill which came out to 102 bucks.  Ali and I split a big ass piece of chocolate cake.  I normally do not care about getting desert at a restaurant and in most cases would prefer not to because I know that the restaurant meal was already jammed full of stuff that is not good for you.  However since we had money to spend and I know Ali feels somehow cheated if she doesn’t get desert, we indulged ourselves.  I’d be dishonest if I didn’t say it bothered me.  We took mom back to her place and hung out for a few minutes.  Like her new condo, mom told me that she now really likes the big screen tv.  Wow I am two for two in predictions.  Now if I could just convince her that she will be much happier and healthier if she gives up smoking.

On Sunday night I watched another old movie classic while I laid in bed, Taxi Driver.  It was a very strange movie.  I didn’t quite follow why the chain of events went down as they did.  It’s over 30 years old so I’m not worried about spoiling the plot here in the hopes that someone can explain to me how they got from point A to point B.

Ok Robert DeNiro is a guy that has a hard time sleeping so he gets a job driving taxi’s at night.  DeNiro is a quirky but interesting character.  He spots Cybil Sheppard, whom actually was sort of hot in her youth and manages to work up the courage to ask her out.  He makes the mistake of taking her to a porn movie for their first real date.  Cybil is offended and dumps him.  Shortly after this he is giving a ride to a guy that tells DeNiro to park outside of an apartment building.  The guy tells DeNiro to look up at the window at the silhouette of the woman.  He says that is his wife but that isn’t their place.  He said she was screwing some other guy and he was going to kill them, both.

After this odd scene, DeNiro becomes very interested in guns.  He buys 3 of them and practices to become proficient in their use.  He plans to kill the politician that Cybill Shepard is working for, for some odd reason.  I don’t quite understand why.  DeNiro also makes an attempt at this time to convince Jodie Foster, who plays a 12 and a half year old prostiute to get out of the sex business.

So DeNiro finally is ready to set his assassination plan in action, he goes to a political rally.  As his target is making his way through the crowd, DeNiro reaches into his coat for the gun but a secret service guy spots him before the gun is pulled.  DeNiro panics and runs and manages to get away.

Well he still needed to use his gun for something.  He goes and finds Jodie Foster’s pimp (Harvey Keitel) and shoots him.  Then he goes into the building where she turns tricks and kills two more people, the landlord for the dive and whatever client she was servicing.  Oh before he started on this path of madness he gave himself a mohawk. (now Cape Fear makes more sense) During his rampage he gets shot himself a few times.  I thought he was going to die but he doesn’t.  Instead they fast forward ahead.  DeNiro is fine, back driving cabs.  Jodie Foster got out of hooking and was back with her parents.  DeNiro gives a ride to Cybill Sheppard, drops her off at her house and doesn’t charge her for the fare.  Movie over.  I don’t know I just didn’t understand the logic of DeNiro going ape shit after only going on one brief date with the woman and how killing a politician she worked for was a logical step to take.  Don’t get me wrong, it was an interesting movie, it just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.  B+

Memorial Day we had no major plans until 4 in the afternoon when we were going to a picnic held by the runners club we belong to.  I ran a couple miles on the treadmill in the morning.  Afterwards I jumped in the pool to cool off which felt great.  The rest of the day leading up to leaving for the picnic I basically screwed off, alternating between playing Mario Kart on the Wii and WoW.

I was a bit bummed the picnic wasn’t until 4.  I think it would have been better to have it earlier.  Most people have to work on Tuesday so having it later in the day is counter productive in my eyes. As always, I was also concerned about mixing in during a social event.  The picnic was held at a private beach club right on the beach on ultra-expensive Gordon Drive, it was a beautiful location.  A lot of people turned out, more than I expected.  Very shortly after we got there a big problem developed, flies.  There were swarms of flies diving at the food and the people.  It was really bad. Attempts were made to address the issue by covering food with paper towels or deploying individuals as designated fanners to keep the little bastards away.  Even with these efforts, it was pretty much impossible to eat anything that did not have a fly standing on it a few seconds earlier.

I wore one of my many Eagles t-shirts to the event and it proved to be a valuable ice breaker.  I talked to a couple guys whom were also fellow Eagles fans, the one guy pretty extensively.  We also talked to a woman in the club who ran a marathon in all 50 states and is now working on running a race in every continent.  She just got back from running a marathon in China, wow.

 Besides the flies, the get together wasn’t bad although I still wished it was held earlier in the day.  We headed out after about two and a half hours.   I was pretty tired and went back to bed and fell asleep before Ali came back after watching the latest dancing show, So You Think You Can Dance. She set it up to tape on the normal non-HD channel.  I told her to record it in HD and I might watch it.

I finally have the 73 inch tv and the stand pushed all the way back into the entertainment nook.  It looks great.  I’ll have to snap a picture of it in it’s permanent home.  The Camry is like a new car since getting the tires replaced.  It’s so quiet on the road now, it’s fantastic.

This morning I noticed that I still had Buttons insulin in the fridge.  I didn’t throw it out.  I picked it up, looked at it and put it back.  It made me sad again.

Yesterday on my way to the gym I had to stop at the Office Max across the street to pick up something for work.  When I went to check out I looked at the clerk checking out my line and did a triple take.  It was someone that was obviously born a man, maybe 55 years ago or so.  In fact he or she still looked very much like a man except the hair was a bit longer, “she” wore earrings and lipstick.  It was bizarre.  I am not the type to stare at people, I feel it’s rude.  However I couldn’t but help but to keep checking this person out.  I wasn’t quite sure if it was a joke, like it was “dress like a woman” day.  Well the other line was shorter so I jumped over there. 

This other clerk had his own set of issues.  He seemed very nervous yet he stared at you awkwardly during the entire transaction.  He asked me if I wanted the extended warranty on my item which I politely told him no.  He stared at me awkwardly in silence until I repeated “No, thanks I don’t need it”  The entire transaction was very weird.  After completing the transaction he continued the odd staring, almost like he was expecting me to say something of great importance.  I was happy to exit the store.

It looks like I will be making my first appearance at the Rumble in two years after destroying my knees there in 2006.  I really had no plans to play.  However this week I got my Rumble application in the mail and it lit a little fire inside.  Charlie, whom I played with the last two times has dropped out of the volleyball scene.  Awhile back Randall had mentioned that he would possibly be interested in playing the Rumble sometime.  Not expecting much, I shot him an email to see if he had any interest in possibly travelling 1200 miles to play in his first grass tournament.  At first it seemed pretty iffy because of some work commitments he has but he got those worked out.  We are going to play! 

It’s going to be an interesting series of events.  Once Randall committed I had to see what Ali wanted to do because she actually is going to be up in PA the week prior to attend a dance recital for her niece.  I wasn’t sure if she wanted or would be able to because of work commitments, turn right around a few days later and head right back to PA.  Well she said she wanted to come, along with Nicki.  So after confirming we could stay at my dad’s townhouse in Flying Hills, we formulated a plan. 

Randall is going to be flying up from Fort Lauderdale on Friday.  We are going to be leaving a day or so in advance, driving and then picking him up at the airport. We will play on Saturday and then Randall flies out Sunday. We will drop him off and then we will pull back out for Florida either late Monday or early Tuesday.  It will be a whirlwind trip but I think it will be a lot of fun.  I’m anxious to see how our beach game will translate to grass. 

Randall is excited for the trip, he released this press release:

It was announced today at a 1:15 pm news conference that Team Zero will make an unprecedented appearance at this year’s Pottstown Rumble. Fresh off of their come from behind win in Siesta Key last month, Team Zero looks to challenge a historically large field of teams for the coveted title. Duf, a native of Reading, Pa, won the title back in 1999 against a field of 100+ teams. A new training regimen has made Duf leaner and meaner a near decade later. While no stranger to the beach game, Sir_Randall seeks to compete in his 1st Rumble and 1st tournament on grass courts. It also marks the first time in 4 years that Sir_Randall has played with the old school rules namely no let serve and side out scoring.

I’m undecided if I want to take the party van or the Camry for the trip.  The Camry would cut our gas costs close to half. However I am not thrilled with the idea of putting 2600 miles on it plus the extra space in the van makes long drives more enjoyable.  The negatives of taking the van are the large gas expense, marginal air conditioning and the uneasy feeling of rolling the dice whenever we take it.  I always feel like I am trying to avoid rolling a 7 with it.  It did drive just fine the past couple days though. We may have to use this link that Randall forwarded to me to sniff out the best gas prices along the way. http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=&src=Netx  

I am looking forward to Memorial Day weekend.  We don’t have big plans other than possibly attending a Memorial Day picnic held by the running club.  The Camry goes into the dealership today, I hope it doesn’t sound like I am driving an ATV on smooth surfaces after today.   I put in a couple miles on the treadmill at home last night, it went fine.  Today I am leaving early to meet up with the satellite installer at home that is going to convert us to HD, allowing me to watch the Eagles in glorious detail in a few months.

So we watched the American Idol final last night.  Ali and I were both glad that David Cook beat out the little munchkin David.  Here are my observations from the show:

– What was with the dress Jordin Sparks was wearing?  I told Ali it looked like she ripped the cover off of the lunar lander.  She just doesn’t get it.  She should take notes from Carrie Underwood and drop some weight.

– Speaking of Carrie Underwood, she looked great. I don’t know how much I liked the song she performed. Holy shit, that outfit was as short as short could be.

– The one female contestant that has the hair that looks like a skunk was horrible.  When she sings she sounds like she just woke up after smoking 3 packs of cigarettes and drinking a jug of Jack Daniels.

– Since we haven’t really been watching the show for the better part of two months I really noticed that Paula Abdul has dropped a few pounds.  At the beginning she looked dumpy and frumpy.  Last night she looked dramatically thinner and better.

– I couldn’t believe ZZ Top performed.  Those guys looked old when they were big in the 80’s.  I can only imagine how old they are now.

– I don’t understand why the Jonas Brothers are popular.

– The segment where they had Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr and Ben Stiller as back up singers for Gladys Knight was the funniest part of the show.

– When the contestants started singing George Michael songs, Ali and I predicted he was going to show up.  I was all ready to mock him and his performance.  Well yea those big glasses were a bit weird and whenever I see him I have a hard time forgetting all of his public bathroom sex incidents as well as some of those gloriously horrible pictures of him in recent years. Well he gave a fantastic performance of “Praying for Time”, the best of the night.  It was really, REALLY good.

So another reality show is done.  yay.  It will be interesting to see what sort of changes they make to combat the erosion of their audience.  Like I said yesterday I am skeptical we will feel much need to watch the next installment of the show.

I am a very accomplished “Virtual Thorn”.  I have an uncanny ability to annoy people without even being in the same zip code.  My voicemail performances from my Entre days are nearly legendary.  However I also am quite proficient with getting my point across via email.  Well I just finished up annoying the shit out of someone else.

Last week I bought a hard drive on ebay to go into the external enclosure that I plan to use to expand the recording capacity of the HD Tivo.  Well after I won the auction I paid for the item immediately and anxiously awaited it’s arrival.  After three or four days I had not received anything nor had I received any communication from the seller.  At that time, using Ebay’s message system I submitted a simple question to the seller. “Has this item shipped yet?”  I received no response.

So I waited up until yesterday to attempt contact the seller again.  This time I found his personal email address from this paypal account.  I sent this Hi I paid for this a week ago and never received any sort of shipment notice.  What is the status?”  You can sense the slight annoyance in the message but it was still civil.  The seller actually replied to this email with a USPS tracking number.  I plug the number into the tracking site and it comes back as invalid.  I reply back to the seller with this information.  He replies back “That is what the postal machine spit out to me..” nothing else.

So I am getting annoyed with this person now.  I write back and ask him when he shipped it. “Last night”, meaning he waited almost an entire week before shipping it, if he even shipped it at all.  Well now the angry switch was flipped and I send him this in email.

Wow, not a great turn around. I wonder how long it would have taken to ship if I didn’t say something?”

It was nothing horrible but I wanted to make the point that I didn’t appreciate him f’ing around for a week after receiving payment before he got around to shipping the hdd.

Well this set off a rapid fire exchange of email.  It became quite obvious to me I wasn’t dealing with a Rhodes Scholar.  Follow along and enjoy the ride.

Seller – “When you get the package send it back for a refund. Dont appreciate the tone”

Me – “Don’t appreciate you sitting on the payment with no communication.  Feedback will be appropriate.”

Seller – “OK but still send it back my Drive deserves a better home”

Me – “Keep digging, I’ll throw you a shovel.  I actually would return it but I can only imagine how long it would take for a refund to be posted if ever at all”

Seller – “Same day to get rid of you. BTW what am i digging?”

Me (just throwing this against the wall to see if it sticks)- “I find it quite funny that you found my request to have shipped the product within a few days of receiving payment unreasonable.  Good luck on Ebay.

If you seriously want to erase this transaction for both of us, which I would welcome, refund the Paypal payment now and I will either refuse delivery of the drive or return it to you asap.  Otherwise I couldn’t trust that you would follow through.”

Seller – “no it is quite disturbing that you have called me a thief twice when i provided you a tracking number for your drive.  now i am to trust you (one who brought fraud into the discussion) that you would actually return my drive to me.  no, you keep the drive, leave the feedback you want and i hope the drive dies soon because there is no warranty from seagate.  i have been on ebay for close to 5 years and this is the first time I have come across a person like yourself.  i guess it is the new policy that sellers cannot leave negative that has made buyers so crazy.  enjoy the drive and with the holiday weekend you might get it next week. nice doing business with cha.  enjoy”

Me – “Again, this all evolves from your disregard of common auction courtesy.  Go figure that I am to blame for your screw up.  Not good at taking responsibility are ya?  I have been selling for years as well and have conducted quite a few transactions myself.  I know how I treat people that buy from me.  I also know that if you continue to ignore people that buy from you, you will continue to receive the feedback like I will be leaving.  If I had for some reason forgotten/neglected to ship an item for almost a week and ignored a buyer’s initial inquiry into the shipment a few days prior, I would be apologetic, not combative.  

Do business as you see fit, it just won’t be with me.  

I will be quoting this email in my feedback.  I’m sure others will find it quite entertaining.  Have a nice day.”

Seller – “go fuck yourself.”

Me – “I’ll include that too, thanks.”

I win, you lose.  It’s awesome because Ebay recently changed their policy and sellers can no longer leave feedback for buyers.  If a buyer pays for the item he has done his part.  This policy change prevents what used to be a common policy where a seller would hold buyer feedback hostage to ensure that negative feedback wasn’t left for them if they did something shady.  I can hardly wait to leave feedback on this tool.

After work yesterday Ali stopped and picked up Buttons remains.  They are in a heart shaped box, identical to the box we have Maggie’s ashes in.  I took a moment last night and opened the box to look, something I never did with Maggie’s box.  It instantly made me very sad, I closed it up a few seconds later.  I doubt I will ever open it again.

I finally received the replacement for the Littermaid litter box yesterday.  I put it together last night and put it in place.  They actually sent us one model level above what we had.  The new box has a LED clock on it that can be used to have the box not run at night because of the noise. The motor on this unit seems quieter than the old one.  With just one cat using the box I think we will have less issues with it this time around.

Last night we watched American Idol and the Dancing with the Stars finale.  It was too much for one night.  Even though we basically have abandoned American Idol we decided to watch the final performance show.  The show started off as stupid as you can imagine with Michael Buffer doing his “let’s get ready to rumble…” schtick while the final two came out in boxing robes.  It was so f’ing asinine.

 I just can’t stand the young kid.  He is so “oh gosh, golly gee willickers…” it makes me sick. I laughed out loud when during his second song he was wearing his “big boy” outfit with big anchors all over it, yes, anchors.  He obviously has lead a very sheltered life.  He will probably turn out to be a male version of Britney Spears, snorting coke off the ass of hookers by the time he hits 21.  The judges heaped praise upon him last night and indicated they thought he was the clear winner.  I hope David Cook wins although I really don’t care.  I doubt we will watch the show at all next year.

Kristi Yamaguchi won DWTS.  She was the best dancer for sure but I don’t know how deserving of the win she was.  She had the cards stacked way in her favor from the get go.  Figure skating is dancing on ice, she already had all the tools, she just had to modify them a bit.  Ali said she was sad it wouldn’t be on for 4 months, she enjoys it that much.  At first I asked her if she was joking, just saying that because she knew I was relieved about it.  Nope, she genuinely misses it.

Our reality tv schedule will be much lighter now, good.

This post from one year ago is funny, the movie part…

During a serious speech by Gary Kasparov, yea the chess guy, against the Kremlin, somebody released a flying penis.  It made me laugh quite hard, even at 6am in the morning….