That my grandmother who no longer would recognize me due to dementia/senility, never had a drivers license her entire life? As far as I know she never drove a car. I am not sure what the reason for that is. I just remember my grandfather taking her wherever she needed to go. Not driving seems like such a huge show stopper in today’s must go here and there society. Well at least for those of us that don’t live in big cities where public transportation is convenient and prevalent…
I got my issue figured out with the timing system, well actually did Ali sort of. I set up the timing equipment again last night to try to do my test race. Once again I was getting whacked out times as I passed chips over the line. I told Ali “WTF, the numbers coming across make no sense, how can the time be over 60 hours??” Ali just threw out the idea that maybe it was counting time from prior days. Immediately I dismissed that idea as not correct. However as I was eating dinner I thought about it some more. I realized that the test race I was running was set to by held on April 18th, 3 days ago. I went in and changed the race to the current day, reran the tests and bingo, it all worked perfectly. Thank you Ali.
I was productive last night. Besides figuring out my timing issue I also dug up a 
sprinkler in the front yard that had blown it’s top off and was geysering. Replacing sprinkler heads is extremely easy since I attached them all with the flexible tubing. The job took all of 5 minutes.
Nicki and Sadie really are becoming good buddies. Last night I left them out and Sadie immediately flushed out a rabbit which she chased around the shed. The rabbit ran under the shed and Sadie without hesitation crawled under the shed after it. Nicki didn’t want to be left out of the fun and managed to squeeze most of her body under the shed as well. At one point there were two dog rear ends poking out from under the shed side by side, it looked funny.
Next week I am taking a training class on Exchange 2007. This is going to be a different training experience as it is a “remote classroom” Basically they send you the books and course materials and then you take the case remotely from your home or office on your pc. They use remote meeting software that is very popular today. In theory it is a win/win. The trainer gets to save a lot of costs by not having to tie up lots of resources. They can literally train people from around the world with a few clicks of the mouse. From the student perspective I don’t have to worry about the burdens of travel arrangements, the inconvenience of being out of the area and the costs for meals and other ancillary expenses. I am still a bit skeptical of the effectiveness of this sort of environment versus a conventional classroom experience but I am willing to give it a try.
Saturday morning was another super early one thanks to our non-paying jobs as race timers. I had the alarm set at 4:30. For some bizarre reason I woke up on my own at 4:10. This race was a small one with only a little more than 100 participants. I expected it to be a pretty laid back time. Well it was laid back until I plugged in the extension cord that powers the equipment into the same outlet in the parking garage we used last year. It was dead.
Shit, that’s not good. I tried the other outlet, still dead. I ran up to the 2nd floor of the parking garage and tried that outlet, it was dead too. Now we had a problem. The race was scheduled to start in about a half hour and had nothing set up and was still looking for power. I ran around the garage looking for other outlets to try. Finally I found a live outlet at the far end of the garage. The bad news is it was about 400 feet away. Luckily I brought a few of my own extension cords with to combine with the club’s cords, we just barely had enough to make the lengthy power run.
I spent a good 15-20 minutes addressing the power problem. As a result when the race started I still did not have the timing system up and running. After the runners started I had to run over to the finish and quickly finish up. It was a bit frantic. Luckily that was the last of the drama for the race. The race went well otherwise. There were a couple chips that did not register as the runners crossed, just like there always is. Luckily with the small runner field it was quite easy to keep track of any missed reads. We were packed and out of there before 9am.
I brought the new timing system along to show some of the board members that were there. I showed off the impressive three to four foot read height as well as how easily the hardware is set up. Our only decision is which timing device we are going to go with, the small wafer that attaches to the sneaker or a 
chip that gets strapped to the ankle. The ankle mounted chip is easy to attach but they are much more expensive, need to be cleaned, present more storage issues and have lower read heights than the shoe chip. I am going to push for the club to go with the shoe based chips. My only reservation about them is the recurring issue I see every race with certain people being baffled by the process of attaching the device to the sneaker. These new chips are smaller, lighter and totally flat so I am hoping there will be less issues in that area.
After we got back and had the stuff unloaded Ali retired for her nap. In the couple hours she napped I knocked out a TON of to do’s. I won’t bore you with 
the list. After she woke up we headed outside to the garden. It was time to harvest two of our three potato mounds. As you can see we got quite a few nice potatoes out of the hills. While we were out there we harvested our remaining beets as well as a bunch of “carrots”.
Our carrots are a bit odd. If you look in the top right corner you will see the one carrot was the size of a small beet. I never have seen a carrot as thick in my life. Our carrots look like they were planted next to a nuclear power plant. They have multiple legs, bizarre shapes and in this case supernatural girth. Ali and I think the mutant carrots are the result of us planting them in an area of the garden that was not loose enough. We theorized the carrot grew downward, hit the hard, compacted earth a few inches down and was unable to grow further down. So instead the carrots grew outward. Despite the bizarre appearance the carrots taste just fine.
Last week I got a few accessories for my road bike like a set of conventional pedals to replace the shitty toe clips, a water bottle holder and a multi-function bike tool. I installed the new parts Saturday and decided to put it to the test on Sunday while Ali was at the gym. Up until this point my longest ride on the bike was a little under 4 miles. I decided I wanted to ride the bike to the grocery store and back. As far as I could recall it was approximately 7 miles each way, a huge increase in mileage. Yea I knew it may not be the smartest thing to more than triple the distance of one ride to the next but oh well. It was in my head, I needed to do it.
I packed up my back pack with a baseball hat to wear in the store to cover up my helmet hair, a small towel to wipe off sweat, a spare bottle of water and my new bike tool. I threw on a regular pair of baggy shorts and a tank top. Add a pair of sun glasses and my attire was complete, I hit the road.
The ride started out just fine, the weather was beautiful with temps in the upper 60’s to lower 70’s. When you ride a bike you get to see much more of the road in detail. Along the way I saw a twisted 6 foot long level by the side of the road, road kill, a bike chain, spilled tomatoes and oranges from the delivery trucks and even a loaf of bread that must have blown out of the back of someones truck on the way home from the store. I saw some wildlife as well like a hawk that had something that two mockingbirds weren’t happy about at all. They were diving like mad at the much larger bird. I also saw an osprey that flew off with what I assume was a fish in it’s talons.
Riding a bike in Florida isn’t all that hard, everything is flat. My breathing and heart rate was elevated but nowhere close to the levels it can be while I am running. The hard part of riding a bike for long distance is the discomfort. It didn’t take very long into the ride until the never ending rotation of positions started. I find myself switching my hand position on the handlebars all of the time so a different pressure point was used. Then there is the ass pain. A human ass on a bike seat just is not a comfortable thing, especially for long durations. As I got closer to the store I found myself raising my rear off the seat for a few seconds on a regular basis to restore the blood flow. The red lights at intersections were a welcome sight as they meant I got to stand for a few moments.
Then there is the dreaded head wind. For the first third of trip out I was into a steady head wind. It slows you down and dials up the exertion level. Since it was early in the ride I had plenty of energy to power through it. When I hit another head wind on the ride back it was not welcomed at all.
Ironically Ali was on her way back from the gym as I was riding to the store. She actually saw me turning left towards the grocery store so she pulled in without my knowledge. I was surprised when she came up from behind me with a “Hey handsome..” It was nice that she stopped. She went into the store with me where we bought the soymilk I came for as well as some spray on sunblock. Ali saw I had on the tank top and thought it would be wise for me to wear some sunblock since my skin cancer areas were all exposed. She got a kick out of spraying the cold sunblock on to my warm skin. I didn’t find it quite as funny.
Having Ali stop was nice because I was able to offload the back pack and groceries to her. I told her the ride there was a bit tougher than expected. She asked if I wanted to throw the bike in the car and ride back with her. I am sure she knew the answer before she asked. Of course I was going to ride back, it was set as a goal in my head so it must be completed. I told her I would see her in a half hour or so.
The ride back was not tons of fun. That head wind I spoke of was now amplifying the considerable burn I was now feeling in my legs and hips that are not accustomed to doing a bike riding movement for such a long time. There was a lot more hand shifting and ass adjustment on the ride back. I just kept plugging away. By the time I got back I had been out more than an hour and a half. I originally thought it would take me much less time. It felt quite good to get my ass off the bike. My legs were pretty spent as well.
Later in the day when we headed out I set the odometer on the car to measure the distance. I found out that the trip was actually about 8.5 miles each way meaning I trekked 17 miles instead of 14. No wonder it took longer than anticipated.
We thought it would be fun to take the dogs on a “trip”. Nothing gets Nicki more excited than the phrase “wanna go for a ride?” She runs around and hops up and down in excitement. We piled in the Camry and headed out. Nicki slept in the back seat while Sadie sat on Ali’s lap up front for the entire ride.
First stop was Home Depot. I needed to get a new sprinkler head, I found one sprinkler with the top blown off in the front yard that needs to be replaced. After that we all went into Pet Supermarket. We had a fun time with the dogs walking around the store checking out all of the stuff as well as the other dogs. We picked up two monster bones to keep Sadie busy.
After that I stopped at Sports Authority. Initially I planned to buy a pair of conventional spandex bike pants that have the padding in them to help alleviate ass pain issues. I was not thrilled with the typical spandex look but after enduring the ride earlier I was willing to pull on the tights. Well when I got back to the bike pants I saw they had a new invention, baggy bike shorts! They basically had a conventional bike pant sewn in as a liner with baggy shorts over top. I thought this was fantastic, I was able to pick up a pair of pockets and avoid putting my junk on display for all the world to see at the same time. Yea they cost 10 bucks more than the regular spandex variety but it was money well spent it my opinion. I can’t wait to try them out to see if they help with the level of ass discomfort.
After that we originally planned to head home but then Ali suggested that we could stop at the dog park. We hadn’t been to the dog park in years. For a little while we tried taking Nicki but she would not interact with the other dogs and instead preferred to sit up on the park bench with us. We thought that maybe with the addition of outgoing Sadie to protect her, Nicki might be more comfortable.
The park wasn’t very full, there were less than 10 dogs there. Initially Sadie and Nicki just did a lot of walking around smelling everything. I’m sure it is a dog smell nirvana. Slowly we interacted with the other dogs. Sadie was her normal outgoing self, interacting with the other dogs and people just fine. She was even running around chasing some of the other dogs. Nicki was much more cautious but she did interact with the other dogs. I think having Sadie along gave Nicki a bit more reassurance. We stuck around for close to an hour before heading home. The dogs had a very fun day.
Sunday night I made burgers for the dogs and I to cap off their day of fun. They both were tired, especially Sadie. She was uncharacteristically subdued for most of the evening. Late Sunday evening I decided to do some testing with the new Ipico system. I ran into a very odd problem that I was unable to figure out on my own. I went to bed feeling a bit frustrated.
Oh yea, Ali and I both love the new counters and sink. We still find ourselves randomly commenting how great they are even a couple weeks out.
Years ago I bought Nicki a MONSTER rawhide bone. It looks like it is a dinosaur bone. Well Nicki initially tried to chew on this thing but soon dismissed it as being too big. Since then it has basically sat untouched in the bottom of Nicki’s toy basket for a few years, enter Sadie.
Sadie is a chewing machine. She just loves to chew on things and she is very good at it. Since arriving in our house she managed to chew the knot off one end of monster rawhide. Once she did that the smaller middle section was exposed. Well after Sadie got the hard work done Nicki started taking renewed interest in the bone. The dogs have been taking turns chewing on it now.
It’s quite funny how they try to steal the bone from each other. The other night Nicki initiated some wrestling and chasing around the house with Sadie. Once they were done Sadie, who had been chewing on the bone before the session began, was thirsty so she went over to her water bowl to drink. As soon as Sadie vacated the area Nicki went right over and claimed the bone once again. If dogs had cartoon balloons that popped up over their heads Nicki’s would have read something like “Youngsters, so easy to trick….”
Sadie decided to chew up a wooden coaster holder that was on one of the side tables. I scolded her although I told Ali it was partially our fault because none of her normal chew items were available, Ali had them locked in the bedroom.
We have a race to time this weekend which just happens to be held in the government complex where I work. After the race I need to come into the office for a little while to do some hardware work on a server, tons of fun.
The weekend should be pretty status quo otherwise.
I came up with an idea to help with my Camaro aspirations since it seems likely that our refinancing is on life support. I want to start overpaying on the Camry loan to get it paid off as quickly as possible. Once that happens that monthly bill could simply be slid into a Camaro payment without affecting our bottom line much at all. What I want to do is allocate whatever money I have left over in my “Shawn discretionary income” budget column every month into paying extra on the loan. I just need to make sure that money gets allocated right to the principal on the loan if I do an electronic transfer.
Just another reason to say no to that third helping of mashed potatoes.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090415/ts_nm/us_unitedairlines_obese_1
Can you believe the two Martian Rovers are both still alive?? It really is 
incredible that they have existed in the brutal conditions on Mars for the past 5 years and keep chugging along. These things were supposed to last 3-6 months tops! Oh you can follow the Martian rover twitter page too fyi.
My brother-in-law and I are about as polar opposite as you can be politically. We 
have had several rather heated exchanges over various topics. However even though I may not agree with his ideas I have to give credit where credit is due. Here he is holding a sign that I couldn’t help but laugh at. Nice one Damon.
Like I mentioned a few days ago I made a Twitter account. Twitter, for those of you that don’t know what it is, is a free service that is like one big texting cloud. You are only allowed to send messages up to 140 characters in length so anything that is posted is brief. Well it is all the rage in the techno/youth crowd. Everyone is twittering sending out updates by the second of their mostly meaningless daily activities. (isn’t that what blogs are for) Well this is blogging to the 10th power. Instead of reading one recap of a person’s thoughts you get besieged by dozens of them throughout a day. It’s just f’in stupid IMO.
I mean who really cares enough about all of these people that you want a real time stream of their every thought or activity? It’s bad enough that I am on Facebook. If I read one more person took a “What sort of FILL IN THE BLANK are you?” quiz I am going to throw up. It’s madness.
After being forced to look at the pictures of the two players from this mornings contest I felt the need to do something macho. What better fits the bill than another 300 work out? I am imagining a routine where I do 300’s every Wednesday, do regular weight workouts the rest of the weekdays and then follow up with running on Sundays. Now that would be a pretty complete exercise routine. Today’s workout was tough but slightly more bearable than the week before. I expect that trend to continue if I am able to keep it up.
WHAM!! THUD!! is the sound of our refinancing effort slamming into a wall and dropping to the floor. I got a call from our loan officer telling us the appraisal came in low, very low, some $140,000 lower than the current property appraiser valuation. I knew that the appraisal could be a bit lower than what I estimated however I had no idea it would be that low. Our area has a TON of foreclosures. How can you get a fair appraisal of a home if it is being comp’d against foreclosed homes that are in various states of disrepair?
The loan officer said he spends most of his day calling back potential refinance customers telling them their appraisals came back way low. As a result of the low number, the amount we could refinance is cut way down to the point where we couldn’t even consolidate the existing debt we had planned to. Of course the decision was not the loan officers, Fannie Mae has strict numbers that it is willing to loan based on appraised value. He said I was welcome to do some research on my own to see if I could find some better comps and send them to him. I sent him a few but I don’t really expect it to have much of an effect on the bottom line.
Of course this is very frustrating and disappointing. Ali and I struggled back and forth with the decision to refinance or not for a long time. Once we finally decided to do it it was a foregone conclusion that we would be approved. We were excited to make a drastic cut in the monthly nut we would HAVE to pay as well as having some extra bucks to knock out some home improvement projects. We have stellar credit, steady employment and are stable. I don’t really see what good an appraiser is doing by low balling the number if it makes both the bank and consumer miss out on the financial gain to be had from refinancing. Oh well, f them.
I was shocked when Ali told me last night that Harry Kalas died earlier in the day. Evidently it wasn’t big enough news down here to make the local headlines or the Yahoo home page news that I check out several times a day.
I immediately felt a weight of sadness hit me. I loved Harry Kalas. Harry was the only voice I have never known as THE Phillies announcer. He called his first MLB game 2 years before I was born.
I clearly remember sitting at our old house in Gouglersville with the stereo on listening to Harry call a game. He was so good at making you see the game through his voice that a TV was unnecessary. I loved hearing Harry, “Wheels” (Chris Wheeler) and Richie Ashburn interact.
I am genuinely and deeply saddened by his passing. Thank you Harry for four decades of magic.
When I was on mlb.com reading the Harry Kalas story I was shocked to see yet another big baseball name from my childhood died, Mark Fidrych. Fidrych came into the league in 1976 with the Detroit Tigers, right in the middle of the height of my love of baseball. He was a crazy, flamboyant, and very good left hander. He had an incredible 19-9 record his rookie year. Unfortunately after his brilliant 1st year he had a series of injuries that cut his career way short. Evidently he died accidentally, he was found under a truck he was working on. He was only 54.
I watched the season finale of Terminator – Sarah Connor Chronicles. Just like the rest of the show, it was fantastic. They totally turned what you were thinking upside down in the finale. I certainly hope it is getting decent ratings so it continues indefinitely. It is my favorite show on TV right now since BSG is done. It is so much better than Heroes at this point.
I watched the BJ Penn versus GSP II fight on Spike on the Tivo last night. BJ needs to stay at 155. At 170 he just looks fat and soft. GSP basically beat the shit out of him. It was shocking to see BJ dominated like that. Yea BJ has lost before but never was he in a fight where he did NOTHING offensively. I don’t know who at 170 would have a chance of beating GSP. He reminds me of the Russian from Rocky IV. He just destroys people.
Many of the tech podcasts I listen to are constantly talking about Twitter. Twitter this, tweet that, blah, blah. Well since I don’t put nearly enough of myself out there electronically I decided to join the lemmings and made a twitter account. duf67 for any twitheads out there. I don’t know how much I’ll tweet. So silly….
All weekend long we enjoyed our new kitchen counter tops.
They make everything look better on them. Washing dishes is more enjoyable, food being prepared on them looks better, even stuff piled on top of them looks more organized. Another by product of the dark varied pattern is they absolutely hide dirt from the naked eye. You can’t really tell if they are dirty or not. With the old white counters EVERYTHING was visible.
Saturday we busted ass to get everything done before picking up mom after she finished work at 5. I was a whirlwind of activity both inside and outside. We piled both dogs and Ali into the party van to pick up mom. About halfway on the trip back home the blower fan on the van mysteriously died. It was rather warm outside so we put the windows down and relied on wind power to keep things comfortable. I kept trying the fan multiple times hoping it would magically start working again. Unless it is something as simple as a popped fuse it is going to probably require a mechanics intervention. Trying to replace the blower motor is just a mess in a van since 2/3 of the engine compartment is tucked back under the console.
Mom thought the counters looked even better in person than they did in the pictures. She thought the sink and faucet set up was extremely cool as well. I agree.
I made steaks on the grill for dinner. The weather was perfect so we ate out on the lanai. Later mom agreed to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. We didn’t start watching until 8, the movie was 2:45 long so mom predicted from the get go that she would not be awake by the end, she was right. The movie was good. It was a bit long, the middle section seemed to drag on for awhile but I guess when you are trying to document a persons entire lifetime it is going to take awhile. The premise of being born with an old body and dying with the body of an infant held a lot of interest for me, especially with my dark obsession with the aging process. Brad Pitt did a great job in the film. Of course I can’t ever remember a film that he was in where I didn’t think he did a great job. He is really a good actor IMO. The movie had a lot of strong emotional moments in it, especially towards the end. Ali was in all out crying mode by the time it finished. There were a couple things in there I didn’t quite connect the dots but it wasn’t bad enough to make me feel bad about the plot. I liked the movie, just make sure you allocate a three hour block to watch it, I’d give it an A-. Mom went to bed a little over half way into it.
We had another fantastic day weather-wise on Easter. I started off my morning in an enjoyable manner for me, I ran a couple miles on the treadmill. After the run I was pretty overheated so I decided to go jump in the pool even though the air temp was not quite 70 degrees yet and the water was only 75 degrees. Wow the first few moments after diving in were quite stimulating. My entire body felt like it was zapped with electricity. However I swam around a bit to get the blood moving. It didn’t take long till the water felt refreshing instead of cold. Sadie was thrilled I was in the water and instantly began running around the pool edge waiting for me to splash her. I was happy to oblige.
Our Easter morning was nice and relaxing. All three of us and the two dogs spent the majority of the morning just hanging out on the pool deck relaxing. A lot of times when mom is over I get the feeling that she thinks she is burdening us with her presence, especially if I am off doing other things around the house while she is there. I hoped that since we were all out there with her that she would feel less of a need to head out early.
I got my family phone calls in during the morning as well, talking to my dad, brother and sister. I got to hear about my dad’s possible relocation from out west back to PA, my brother’s ongoing divorce drama and my sister’s crazy life as a mother of two. I almost felt guilty as I relaxed out on the pool deck in 80 degree weather talking to them.
One of the things we talked about with mom was her attempt to stop smoking using a drug called Chantix. Supposedly it makes you not desire a cigarette somehow. Mom’s initial reason she gave for quitting was financial instead of for health reasons which I think is not a good basis for change. She thought Chantix was cool because you are allowed to keep smoking while taking it. The drug is supposed to wean you off cigarettes until you are the point where you are not smoking at all. Well mom has been smoking less after a month but she is still smoking. I don’t really see the point of such a program. I expressed my feelings to mom about it. I said that you can’t take the drug indefinitely, 12 weeks max, continuing to smoke while on it makes no sense to me. It’s like saying a cocaine addict can take a quick snort once in a awhile. I can only hope that mom sees the light and stops for good, for the right reasons.
For Easter “dinner” mom prepared a homemade eggplant parmigiana, instead of us doing a dual meal thing to account for Ali’s vegetarianism. (is that a word?) Mom complained that the eggplant was too bitter. Ali and I thought it tasted fine. As a result mom didn’t take any of it home with her and instead left all the left overs for us. Mom did agree however to take a few of our monstrous beets home, she loves beets.
After lunch both mom and I went in the pool for a bit. I assured mom that the water felt fine after 30 seconds. Mom didn’t have the same experience I did, she bailed after a couple minutes in the water. After drying off we packed up mom’s stuff and I took her home around 3pm. It was a relaxing, enjoyable Easter experience although it hardly felt like an Easter from up north. No Easter baskets were hidden and found, the only eggs to be seen were safely stored in a carton in the fridge and the only bunny ears around were from the shit factories hidden under our shed. Eh, times change.
Although we did most of the housework on Saturday we found the rest of our Easter rather busy. Ali had to do her Nicki food production where she creates a months worth of food at a time. It creates quite the mess as you can imagine. I tried to help with the clean up process as much as I could. I also was involved in folding laundry, making the bed and a few other chores that kept us busy until around 7.
Over the weekend I also spent a considerable amount of time messing around with the new timing system. So far everything I have seen has been all positive. The biggest “ohhh and ahh” came when I tested the read height of the new chips. I was astonished when I was getting confirmation beeps with the chips between three and four feet high. If I get a foot of read height with the DAG system I am lucky. I also spent some time messing around with the included software. It will take a lot of relearning how to do certain procedures but in the long run the new software could expedite the result creation process. So far, so good.
