Archives August 2009

Last night I had the exciting duty of running the carpet cleaner, more prep for Ali’s brothers visit.  It’s amazing or disgusting (depending on your point of view) how much animal hair gets pulled out of the rug when I run this thing.  In total it took me about an hour and a half to do it.

I was so annoyed with the Brett Farve announcement that I posted the quick blurb late yesterday.  He flat out said he was retired three weeks ago and was ABSOLUTELY going to stay that way.  He is just a plain old boob now in my book.  I now hope he falls flat on his face.  Brett has managed to turn his fabled career into somewhat of a joke at this point, dumb ass. 

Google “fred youtube” if you want to see something extremely annoying yet funny at the same time.  I could totally see my brother Patrick doing a skit like this.

Nuff said.

Ali told me that she wanted me to call up ADT to finally make the arrangements to have the cellular option added to our alarm system.  We have been paying for alarm monitoring that basically has not functioned since I switched over to Vonage ages ago.  I knew they charged around $250 for the add on that allows the system to use the cell network to call in instead. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea but Ali wanted it.

So I called ADT up and asked about the cell option, the rep said it was $258 to have the option added PLUS an additional $12 a month monitoring fee.  Well the $258 didn’t bother me nearly as much as the additional $12 a month.  I emailed Ali and told her about the charges and how I thought it was excessive.  That set off a mini e-argument over email about the situation.  I made my pitch to Ali that we should just drop the monitoring altogether after listing a half dozen reasons we didn’t need it.  Surprisingly, she actually conceded that I could just drop it,  her big thing was she didn’t want to be paying for a monitoring service we weren’t even receiving.

So I call ADT back to tell them I was cancelling the monitoring service.  I got a guy on the phone named Shawn ironically.  I explained to him how we had Vonage and how that broke monitoring for us.  I told him I was aware of the cellular option but the costs of it were excessive in my opinion and I would rather just cancel. 

Well evidently asking to cancel the service is like pulling the golden ring.  All of a sudden he was able to offer me an incredibly better deal.  Instead of the hardware costing $258 he could let me have it for $75.  On top of this he would be able to add the cellular monitoring to the account without ANY additional monthly monitoring charges.  I was a bit flabbergasted.  Initially I indicated I still wanted to cancel and that I was a bit annoyed that it took me threatening to cancel to be offered such a deal.   However before the rep cancelled the monitoring I reconsidered and told him I would take the deal.  I knew it would make Ali happy and the financial pinch was now very minor.

Lesson learned, if you are willing to go to the point where you are ready to cancel a service there is a good chance you will be able to get a significantly better deal.  A Facebook buddy of mine chimed in a similar story when I posted about the Sirius online listening surcharge bullshit.  When the fee was announced he called up Sirius and told them he was ready to cancel.  They kept his business by immediately throwing him a $75 credit.

To be honest if you want a nearly as effective security system for little cost and no monitoring fee, simply hop on ebay and buy several ADT signs and post them around your doors and windows.  Unless the potential robber is blind, he will pick another target.

So we have Spook back at home but not much is resolved.  Evidently when I told Ali about Spooks eating incident yesterday morning Ali was still fuzzy from sleep.  As a result she told the vet the cat wasn’t eating but didn’t indicate that it once again was an obvious mouth pain issue.  I found this out later in the day after the vet had already drawn blood to test for some other ailment.  I talked to the vet and told her about the cats obvious pain when eating and that I was sure the problem is still in her mouth.

  The vet said the next step would be feline dental x-rays, one problem, she doesn’t have a feline dental x-ray machine.  Further more she wasn’t quite sure who had one.   Spook could possibly have something inflamed below the gum line, similar to the pain a person has when they require a root canal.  So now the vet is supposed to try to find us somewhere to go.  In the meantime we are back to giving the cat pain meds to ease the discomfort.  Her plate of tuna was eaten this morning so maybe the pain meds will at least buy us some time.

I was a bit surprised this morning when I saw this comment come in regarding one of my multiple “RCI sucks” rants. Evidently I am far from being alone in my thinking that RCI rips it’s customers off, in fact there has been a class action suit against them in the works for several years.  Following the link in the comment will tell you all about it.

Saturday morning I was out on the mower bright and early at 8am.  I wanted to get the mowing out of the way first thing so the rest of the day would be clear for other projects.  I penciled this weekend as lanai cleaning weekend since Ali’s brother is coming down this week and the pool cage had copious amounts of scuzz on the frame.  This project never goes quickly or easily so I wanted the mowing out of the way.

After mowing  we ate lunch and ran out for some shopping errands, the type of shopping I like. We first stopped at Bed Bath & Beyond.  We picked up two replacement chaise lounges.  Originally I was considering buying replacement slings for the old chairs but the cost difference between doing that and just buying new chairs was slim enough that it didn’t make sense when you factored in the labor required to replace the sling.  The BB&B 20% off coupon came in handy.  I put the old chairs out front on Saturday for the pack rats to claim.  I was surprised they lasted until Sunday afternoon.

 The second stop was Best Buy.  Ali said she wanted to get a scanner to scan our old photos into digital format.  It seems stand alone scanners are a dying breed nowadays, Best Buy didn’t have a single one.  Instead we wound up buying an Epson NX510 multi-fuction device.  It prints, scans and has built in Wi-Fi to connect to the network wirelessly.  We will probably hardly ever use the thing to actually print which is just as well with the ridiculous prices for ink cartridges.  It does however have some great functions as a scanner.  I can scan to email, scan to pdf or scan to a jpg all over the network.  It will allow me to do some operations that I used to be relegated to doing only at work.  It also will let us give our old multi-function fax HP printer to mom.

After Best Buy we headed to the AT&T store.  For a long time we have been talking about replacing Ali’s Treo with an Iphone.  Since we were in a money spending mode we decided to finally get that done as well.  Initially I thought we could take advantage of the new 3GS coming out by getting an older 3G for $99.  Well when I told Ali the 3GS had a better camera that could shoot video she said she would prefer to get the latest and greatest instead.  After a short wait until a rep got free, the process was extremely fast and easy.  I already knew exactly what we wanted to do and our sales guy was able to process the order and have us out of there in 10 minutes or so.  Ali had a lot of fun over the weekend setting up and playing with her new toy.  The Iphone actually is a better fit for her job as there are a number of medical/dietary apps for the device which will make her job easier.

Saturday afternoon turned rather rainy so I had to postpone the lanai cleaning until Sunday. Saturday evening we went over to our friends house.  They have two young boys that are very cute.  We don’t get to see them nearly as often as we would like.  We always have a good time when we get together so hopefully we can make an effort to do it more often.  We brought the dogs along since the boys really like interacting with them.  For the first time ever I saw Sadie back away from a kid when the youngest let out some loud shrieks.  Things calmed down after the initial excitement.  We didn’t leave their place till after 11.  I collapsed into bed when we got home, I was exhausted.

Once again I pulled myself out of bed early on Sunday, I knew I had another day of hard work ahead of me.  Pressure washing the pool cage is a pain in the ass, plain and simple.  It requires 4 or 5 hours of tedious labor blasting dirt, mildew and algae from both the pool cage and the pool deck,  a few inches at a time.  It definitely was not a good way to rest my forearms that have been starting to feel like the tendinitis is returning.  When you clean the overhead sections of the cage you look like you just took a shower in a waterfall.  The end result always feels worth it though, it makes the area almost feel brand new.

While I was pressure washing I discovered that there actually was a section of the screen ripped out that Sadie could have escaped through.  My initial thought was she caused the rip by trying to forcibly jam herself through.  On closer inspection I think the corner was loose because of the rubber spline drying up.  I noticed that in most of the corners in sections we never replaced the spline had contracted to the point where the last few inches before the corner had no spline in them making it very easy for the corner to push out.

So of course I needed to address the screen problem, else the dogs would not be allowed out on the lanai until I did.  Ali had also found another section that had a small tear in it that was added to the repair list.  After spending 5 hours on the deck the last thing I felt like doing was replacing screening.

I thought I had enough left over supplies from the last screening project to perform the repair.  I replaced the first section but then came up about 5 inches short for the second section, requiring an impromptu trip to Home Depot.  Both sections that were damaged were by the ground which introduced a new set of challenges.  We have multiple rose bushes planted along the pool cage.  Trying to work around these was not much fun.  I came out of the repair with various bloody spots from the thorns.

Thankfully while I was out working on the pool cage Ali handled all of the inside cleaning duties.  By the time I was done with all of the work I was beat up mentally and physically.

Over the weekend Spook once again stopped eating.  This morning I gave her a few pieces of lunch meat which she ate but once again I noticed she was in severe pain while trying to chew.  She eventually ran away.  So obviously there is still a problem in her mouth.  She will be going back to the vet today, joy oh joy.

The Mike Vick outrage seems to have died down.  It seems that after initial uproar by many people, including myself, a wait and see attitude has been adopted by most.  So far I like what I have heard from Vick, Andy Reid and Jeffrey Lurie.  I have the 60 minutes interview with Vick on my Iphone which I plane to listen to.  Vick has one shot to make this work, it seems that he is aware of the high wire he is walking.  Let’s see how he does.

My uncle posted this link in Facebook.  Damn this is a funny, funny, site.

Today I benched 240lbs for the first time in a long time, probably two years at least if not longer.  I did not call over a spotter for the attempt. Although foolish, I do this for two reasons.   Not having a spotter pumps a few more drops of adrenalin into your system, not having a spotter makes me feel more committed  and motivated to complete the lift. Failure equals an embarrassing call for help.  Second, many spotters are overzealous.  As soon as they see you struggle in the least they grab the bar which totally invalidates the lift in my book.  I struggled getting the weight up there but it got there.

At the gym I talked to my buddy who is also a huge Eagles fan.  Of course we talked about the Vick deal.  He had a bit of a different perspective on the situation.  When he was younger he had a multitude of drug and alcohol problems and was a self described “asshole”.  He turned sober 15 years ago and has been a changed person ever since, totally different than the crazed lunatic he was under the influence of drugs.  Based on his personal experience he is willing to give Vick a chance. 

Of course he thought what Vick did was shameful and criminal just as everyone else does.  But he is willing to give the guy a chance to show the world he has changed, not by saying anything but by what he does.  Let’s see if two years in the slammer, being shamed in front of the world and having his personal fortune erased has truly reforged the core of what he is all about.  I have to admit, I am not quite as outraged as I was 12 hours ago.  He wil be basically walking the high wire the rest of his life with no net.

Even though my anger has cooled somewhat I find myself getting very annoyed with the opinions of some fans that are supporting the move using the comparison to Donte Stallworth who killed someone while driving drunk.  The statements these people make all go somewhat like this ” What Vick did was terrible but come on, these were ONLY dogs. What Stallworth did was MUCH worse because it was a human being that died”  I can only speak for myself but I don’t rate my life as significantly more important than an animals.  Human beings perception of importance is self created, not ordained.

Yes of course today is all about talking about what may be the most controversial signing the Eagles have made EVER, Michael piece of shit Vick but let me get the local Duf world things out of the way first.

So I pull into our driveway last night and am stunned by what I see, Sadie outside. Alison was at work all day, what the hell was Sadie doing outside?  I immediately had visions of her seeing a rabbit outside and deciding to claw through the screen to get at it.  Sadie was very excited to see me.  I didn’t share her excitement.  As I walked towards the house I said out loud “Sadie, why do I think I am going to be VERY angry with you?”

So I go in the house and quickly head out to the lanai and do a fast visual survey, hmmm, nothing looks ripped.  I let Sadie back in.  I have no idea how long she was outside but she seemed no worse for wear.  Luckily it was overcast so the sun wasn’t beating down on her.  I double checked the lanai screens, making sure she didn’t punch a hole in some inconspicuous corner, nope they were all intact.

Well the only theory that made sense was one of the lanai doors may not have been latched securely and Sadie pushed it open.  Of course Ali was concerned when I called her and told her what I walked into but the bottom line was the dog was fine.  I’m sure we both will be double checking that those doors are closed when we leave from now on.

Last night Ali and I got into a nice little argument over something stupid.  When we argue it hardly ever is face to face.  For instance last night I was in the middle of playing WoW and she was Farkling or playing Bejeweled when the argument flared up.  We both continued arguing as we sat at the computer.  A therapist would tell you that is a bad thing.

So last night I see an email flash up from one of the owners in Keener’s fantasy football league saying something about Michael Vick was an Eagle.  I was in the middle of running an instance so I asked Ali to pull up the Eagles site which was overloaded so I told her to check ESPN.  Yep it’s confirmed.

Both Ali and I were in shock. Why in the world would the Eagles sign Michael Vick?  The Eagles have always professed that a player’s character was a very important aspect of their player personnel decisions. You would think after the TO fiasco the Eagles would be the last team to to take a flyer on a player that not only was a convicted felon but also a cancer on his former team, a perennial malcontent. I expected Vick to go to a team owned by some asshole like the Raiders, Redskins or Cowboys.

So the big question is what exactly were the Eagles thinking?  They had to know that signing Vick would bring down a public relations shitstorm on them.  I have seen nothing but outrage as far as the eye can see from faithful Eagles fans.  We don’t want the guy on the team, period.  Sure Vick has incredible physical skills but he never was a great QB, not even close.  He is guy with a strong arm that pulls the ball down immediately and runs if his first receiver is covered.

The Birds are three deep at the QB position, who is going to be the odd man out? Or are the Eagles planning to use Vick as a RB, a receiver or something else? Who the F knows, all I DO know is in my opinion this was a monumental brain fart on the Eagles part. 

Yea I guess most people deserve a second chance although dog killing,  middle finger waving, arrogant assholes don’t deserve to have that second chance include making millions of dollars to play on MY team.

Last night after work I met up with the operations manager for the Shark Shootout to measure the course for the 5K run they are going to be putting on in mid-December.  I brought both my GPS watch and the running club’s ancient measuring wheel.   The run is going to take place on the beautiful grounds of Tiburon, an ultra-exclusive golf course community.

We secured a golf cart to traverse the course.  I immediately noticed the LCD that was mounted in the cart. This thing was incredibly cool.  It uses a GPS to display your location on the course and over lay that on top of  images of the course.  It’s incredibly cool.  On top of the GPS it has internet connectivity that will show the latest sports news or anything else you want off the net.  Feeling hungry or thirsty?  You can place you order for the clubhouse from the device.  It almost made me want to golf again.

So we marked off the course and talked about the logistics of the event.  Since these guys put on events for a living there aren’t many bases that they do not already have covered.  We drove back to the parking lot and were just about to climb into our vehicles when I stopped.  I was doing my customary pocket pat down to make sure I had the essentials, keys, wallet, phone.  Keys, check, wallet, check, phone…… phone…… phone?  Shit my phone was not in my pockets.  I patted myself down repeatedly somehow thinking it may somehow appear in my pocket by magic. 

I flagged Rob down and told him I think I lost my phone.  We quickly walked back to the golf cart area and checked the cart we were in, maybe it just fell onto the seat, no luck.  Shit!  So we hopped back on a cart and retraced our route, I felt bad having to enlist Rob on the search but he was fine with it, he knew that losing a smart phone was not a good thing.  As we were driving the route I was half resigning myself to having lost the phone.  I was imagining the hassle of getting another phone and getting everything set back up.  On the plus side I could probably pick up a new 3GS. Well just as I was dreaming of a 3GS we spotted my phone sitting neatly by the side of the cart path. The rubber skin I have the phone encased in did it’s job, protecting the phone from the unplanned drop from 3 feet.  Crisis averted.

For some reason I have noticed that the word “crazy” has become a go to word in my vernacular recently. ‘That’s crazy”, “It’s crazy” or just plain “Crazy…”  comes out of my mouth on a far too regular basis.  I am not quite sure what kicked use of the word into high gear for me or why, even though I am aware I am doing it, I have been unsuccessful in choosing alternative words to describe a situation or express my feelings. In many cases it doesn’t even make sense why I would use that word at all.  It rained a lot last night, crazy…  The cat isn’t eating, crazy…. 

I was talking to an old guy at the gym that I strike up mini-conversations with now and then.  He was telling me about his various surgeries to fix his knees, hips and back (to which in response I used “crazy” once or twice).  Anyway he said he goes to the gym just to keep everything working.  He said in fact he just applied to try to get into the Peace Corp which requires an applicant to be in able physical condition. For some reason that struck a chord with me.  I found myself Googling “join the Peace Corp” when I got back.  You know it’s something I would seriously consider if my life situation would change for some reason, honest.  That would be living in the true sense of the word. Crazy.

It’s funny, for at least a couple years I have had my Facebook profile set up to suck my blog posts over to my Facebook presence via the RSS feed however for the most part nobody on FB ever read them.  However now it seems that I get more readership off of the FB feed than my actual blog at https://blog.duf.net  For the most part it doesn’t matter although the feed that gets pulled to Facebook loses much of it’s original formatting and comments that are posted on the real blog are not ported to Facebook and vice versa for FB comments porting back to the blog.

It’s all good in the end.  It’s interesting to me to throw stuff out there, some of which is as boring as watching paint dry and other thoughts that can incite opinions, comments and ideas.  I often forget how many eyes these words can get in front of which is a good thing in the end.  Blog posts that go something like “I went on vacation. It was good.” don’t make for very interesting reading.  It’s all about description and opinions.

Yea this is a Warcraft post, if you don’t play WoW feel free to move along, nothing to see here. 

Blizzard recently released patch 3.2 for the game which included TONS of changes and content.  There are a few that I think are extremely cool, let me list them.

Mount time was cut in half.  It’s funny how removing 1.5 seconds from an event makes it feel much better.  A related huge change was the increase in standard flying mount speed.  Regular flying mounts were always annoying and borderline useless because of the speed penalty.  Yea you could fly but you only could move at the same speed as a regular ground mount, a 60% increase over foot speed.  Well with 3.2 they more than doubled the speed of the flyer to 150% of foot speed.  For someone that is trying to level a character from 70-80 this has huge implications.

Prior to this patch you were only able to start flying in the northernd zones at level 78 when you could pay 1000 gold for the cold weather flying ability. Up until that point you were stuck being land bound.  Now, if you already have a level 80 character you have the ability to buy a book to send to your lower level characters that allows you to fly in northernd immediately at level 68!  The combination of these changes will result in a dramatic increase in the levelling speed of a lower level toon.  Being able to fly in straight lines between objectives at 150% speed is much better than riding around objects on the ground at 100% obviously.

Blizzard also has shifted the new mount goodness all the way down the chain.  You can get your first mount at 20 now (used to be 40 way back when) and you can learn to fly in Outlands at 60 instead of 70.  All of this of course is designed to help players get to level 80 as soon as possible where the real fun begins.  Bravo to Blizzard. 

Like I mentioned there are tons of changes that are covered in much more detail elsewhere, let me just say that if you used to play WoW and got tired of it for one reason or another I recommend you give it another look.  It’s an entirely different game nowadays.

Speaking of old WoW players coming back, I recently got my old buddy, co-worker and fellow game player into WoW.  He actually was one of the people that got me into playing WoW initially.  My buddy was hardcore into the game, he knew the quests inside and out, always levelled faster than the rest of us, always had better weapons, more abilities etc. etc..  However over time he went over the edge and WoW sort of consumed his life to the point where it was causing issues at home. He was doing stuff like buying gold and accounts all in the quest to have the ultimate WoW uber character. He HAD to walk away.

Away he stayed for years and years, despite our requests for him to come back and play, just in a more balanced and healthy manner.  Well last week I was telling my buddy about all the cool changes in 3.2 and I again urged him to check it out.  He was intrigued by my descriptions but he had vowed to never go back to the game.  Well I continued to work on him and it came down to getting the ok from his wife since she was the one that was ultimately hurt by the events the first time around.  I asked her to let him to dip his toe back in the water.  Since he quit WoW he has played a ton of different MMORPG games and has demonstrated an ability to do it in moderation, something he could not do with WoW.  I laid this out as a basis that my buddy would be able to once again play WoW without becoming a train wreck. Eventually she agreed to let him try it out but of course it would be under a watchful eye.

We came up with several scenarios for how he could reenter the game.  At first he created a 10 day free trial account, however the account was very limited and didn’t allow him to see any of the new content.  We worked out something that worked out for both of us. 

 I have had two WoW accounts for a long time, I took over the account of a co-worker around three years ago.  On that account I had three level 70 characters that I have not touched for months.  I told my buddy he could simply take over that account from me, that way I am relieved of paying for an account I basically was not using and he gets back in the game with a huge head start on the levelling game.  

I have been trying to help him get acclimated to the game and all of the changes.  It’s enough to make your head spin.  It’s good to have him back in the mix, hopefully the end result is more positive this time.