Jeremy just knows exactly the type of person that makes my skin crawl. Welcome to today’s edition. My advice to this poor, gun stroking citizen that finds it necessary to proudly display his assault rifle on camera, get a knife instead, they won’t tax it as much.
I got up at 3:55 am this morning in order to get ready for having Ali at the airport by 5:15-5:30 am for her trip to PA. She will be up visiting her nieces and other family through the weekend. We took the van to drop Ali off so the dogs could travel comfortably.
After dropping her off it was early enough that I had time to drive back home and drop off the dogs with time to spare. I am trying something different during this Ali hiatus. Instead of driving all the way home and back over lunch to let the dogs out I am instead going to leave work an hour early. The hope is the girls can hold it that long. I am crossing my fingers I’m not pushing the limits too far.
Getting up so early meant I had some extra spare time before work. I decided to stop at Wal-mart. I wanted to pick up a cheap desktop mic to test with our new private IM system. While I was in the electronics department I decided to take a look at the LCD tv’s. I think I mentioned I was looking to replace the monster 32 inch conventional tube tv in our bedroom.
A few weeks ago I saw a 720P Visio for like $370 at Sam’s Club which seemed like a decent deal. I noticed that Wal-Mart had several similar deals on 32 inch sets but the tv’s in that price range were lesser brand names like Sanyo, Emerson, etc…. I walked towards a corner and saw they had several display model LCD’s stacked on a shelf. These are models that have been replaced with the latest and greatest.
Well my eyes locked in on a 32 inch SONY 720P LCD tv. I have always been partial to Sony over the years, even now that they have been somewhat passed by Samsung. Well the TV was 20% off which brought the price down to $318 bucks! A Sony for $318, I’m there. Yea it’s a display model with no box but it appeared to work just fine. I have 90 days to return it if something turns up fishy.
I did my second session of the new EA Active last night. Even though it was shorter, it felt much more difficult. My abs were dying at the end to the point where I had to stop briefly in the middle of a set. The push ups on the Wii Fit board are brutal when you incorporate walking your hands off each side in an alternating fashion. Try it, if you dare.
Last night I finally got a chance to try out EA Active More Workouts, one of my Christmas gifts. My after work Wii fitness routines has been generally lacking and instead I’ve been doing my standard quick crunch / push up routine.
Well much like Wii Fit Plus, they did a nice job with the second iteration EA Active. Instead of a park in the mountains, this version of the game puts you in a tropical location which of course I would always prefer. Almost all of the activities and exercises are brand new.
They made a couple really cool additions, including a warm up and cool down period for every workout something that was severely lacking from the old game. In the original within the first minute you could find yourself doing jumping split squats with no warm up which is a recipe for injury.
When I did the workout challenge in the original game I selected the medium intensity level. I decided to crank it up to high this time around. A half hour later I was thoroughly tired. A quick tip, wear briefs when doing EA Active, the jump rope activity is murder on the jewels otherwise. I’m going to see if I can get a session in after work each day outside of Fridays and the weekend.
My brother Patrick just got back from Japan. He was there for nearly a month for his job. Pat is an incredibly cool kid. If I was able to go back and relive the period of my life from the age of 16-22 I think I would use Pat as a template. He has done and experienced so many interesting things in that time period it makes my head spin.
During that same time period in my life I was spinning my wheels just trying to get by after wasting an opportunity to go to college because of youthful disillusionment in a relationship that went nowhere. Patrick is a great athlete (recently completed his first marathon), extremely intelligent, adventurous and maintains an off center perspective on life that is refreshing. Oh yea, he also plays guitar.
Although he has had several girlfriends during that time period he wisely never allowed them to become the focus of his life. Instead Patrick did everything a kid his age should do, experience life to it’s fullest. I have no doubt his future will be filled with great things.
I was thrilled yesterday when the Check Engine late came on again on the Tacoma. I just spent several hundred dollars a month or two ago having one of the oxygen sensors replaced. From what I can gather there are two O2 sensors on the exhaust system, one before the catalytic converter and one after it. I am wondering if the rear sensor is now acting up.
There is a way to get the diagnostic code by simply using a paper clip to short two pins on the diagnostic connector. Doing so causes the code to be revealed via a series of flashes by the check engine light. I used the same procedure to get a code from the 88 Vette a few years back.
I think I may try to diagnose and repair this one myself instead of spending several hundred bucks needlessly.
Saturday morning was another race for us to time. This was the annual beach run where you actually run on the beach. Ali and I did this run once and didn’t like it at all. I’d much rather time it. Timing a race on the beach is challenging and messy. Early in the morning the air is thick with moisture. Having this moisture interact with electronics is never a great thing, not to mention sticky sand.
Even with the less than ideal conditions, the timing system performed without flaw once again. We simply rolled the timing mats out on the sand and were ready to go. We got cleaned up incredibly fast. We were on the road back home before 9 am after a race that started at 7:30 am.
Ali was only home for a short while before she was heading back out to some swimming and running with her running buddies. I worked on getting all of the post race duties finished up which took right up until almost lunch time.
Satu4rday afternoon I went to the outlets with Ali. She said she wanted to check out shoes at the Bass Outlet as well as stopping somewhere else. She said something about Bass having a super deal where you buy one pair of shoes and get two for free! Well of course this was way to good to be true. I laughed when I walked in and saw the “regular” price of shoes that started at $109 and went up. Haha. Well I took advantage of the “deal” getting three pairs of shoes. I walked out of there paying about the same for the three pair as I would anywhere else. I buy shoes once every half decade or so.
Saturday night we went out with her running buddies to dinner for Michelle’s birthday. We went to the ultra-vogue Mercato area in north Naples. I fully expected to be waiting at least an hour to get seated. Instead I barely had time to order a beer at the bar before our table was ready. We enjoyed a nice dinner with some of the typical silly conversation that develops when we get together.
After our meal we went to another bar in the area called the Pub. I was there once before with Don. The place is a big hang out spot. Unfortunately by the time we got there I switched to drinking Diet Coke since Ali had drank too much wine to recover. The beehive of human activity at the pub is intriguing at first but gets tough to take if you are not drunk. It’s so loud you can’t hear the person next to you without screaming. We didn’t last too long since Ali and I had both been up since 4 am something with no nap. We left a little after 10:30. Bed was welcomed.
Sunday morning I woke up feeling pretty shitty. It was a combo of things that contributed to my overall feeling of ugh. I had not been getting solid sleep the past few days. The excessive eating with a few Samuel Adams surely didn’t help much. Top it off with a big, bright, full moon in the sky and you have a recipe for a pretty blah sort of day.
When I opened up the front door to pull the screen door across I was startled by a piece of paper that fell out. It was a lost dog poster and guess who was on it, Lil Buddy! I had lukewarm feeling about having a phone number to call about Buddy since I already had written off the owner as irresponsible since the dog got loose and didn’t have an ID chip, collar or tags. Ali had dropped buddy off at the shelter on Friday and we felt sure he would get adopted out quickly after the 5 day wait period.
I had Ali call the number when she got up. She told the guy where the dog was and she was sure to mention how the dog had no tags or ID of any sort. Later we got a call from the guy thanking us for finding the dog. He said the dog now is chipped and has tags. Supposedly they normally leave Buddy out and he never leaves the yard (two blocks up from us). Hopefully that practice will come to an end.
The funniest part of all is when we found out the dog’s real name, Bubby. No wonder he reacted to being called Lil Buddy. Hopefully the owner learned a lesson. He’s very lucky to get his dog back.
The weather on Sunday seemed to match my mood as it was overcast all day long with the skies seeming to be ready to burst at any moment. I decided to tackle a project anyway, despite feeling subpar. I headed to Home Depot and picked up 25 landscape blocks. The project was to replace the extremely rotted landscape timbers that surround the area in front of the pool. I have been adopting a policy of replacing landscape timbered areas with permanent edging that doesn’t need to be replaced every few years. I’ve redone a number of areas using either plastic landscape edging or concrete block. Both substances will probably outlast me.
Ripping up the old border was easy as the wood pretty much crumbled in my hand. We wanted to shrink the size of this bed to eliminate the unused space. I placed the new block in place, and back filled the area with dirt I dug up from the fill pit in the back.
In total I probably spent an hour or two on the project. Both Ali and I were happy with how it turned out. I am most happy that I should never have to touch that border again.
The rest of the day was very busy. It seemed like there was just way too much to do. It makes me feel like I need to make more effort to get certain house chores during the week.
One of the things Ali was working on was going through the various files I recovered to see what was good/needed versus corrupt/unneeded. To say it is a tedious job is an understatement.
So last night as I am approaching our driveway I see a car pulled over on the side of the road and a woman in a business outfit in our yard, odd. As I pulled closer I saw what she was doing, trying to corral a small dog in our yard.
After I parked I came over. She asked if I knew whose dog this was which I didn’t. She said she stopped when she saw the dog walking across the road, she is a fellow animal lover. She had been trying to get the dog to come to her for quite awhile but he wouldn’t. He was acting very fearful.
I thought I would give it a try. I motioned for the dog to come over, which appeared to be a Jack Russell mix (not fixed, no tags). Surprisingly he came in my direction and let me pet him. However when I tried to actually grab him he yelped almost like he was in pain and ran away. After that the trust appeared to be broken, he would not allow myself or the woman to get within 10 feet of him.
I heard our dogs going nuts inside seeing me interact with another dog. I told the woman I would let my dogs out in the yard, perhaps that would be of interest to the little guy. My plan worked, as soon as Nicki and Sadie came out into the yard the little guy shot over to the fence and started a sniff exchange.
I came over to the corner of the fence with treats in my hand. I called Sadie down to me and our guest followed. When he got to me I gave him some treats which he gobbled up. Then instead of trying to grab him right away and petted him a bit which he seemed to like and then I picked him up. I expected him to carry on but he was fine this time.
I carried him over and put him inside the fence where he immediately was greeted by our dogs. All three got along fine and started running around and playing. So now I went back to talk to the woman about a game plan. She was the one that stopped so she said she would be willing to take Lil Buddy to get him scanned for a chip although I could tell she would have preferred if I handled it since the dog seemed to warm up to me and not her. Plus she said she has some small dogs at home that aren’t very good with other animals. So I told her I would handle it, we have the big fenced in yard to contain him and I could try to call DAS to see if they could send someone out to get him.
Unfortunately I called DAS 10 minutes after they closed. Their message said to call the sheriff’s office if we had an animal emergency. Well this was hardly an emergency but I called anyway just to find out how it worked. The dispatcher said if we wanted she could send a deputy out and then he could make arrangements to have someone from DAS come out. Well Lil Buddy certainly didn’t appear to be a troublemaker so I told the dispatcher we will just take care of it the next day.
It was funny how quickly Lil Buddy went from being scared of me to being my lil buddy. He was all wags and dog smiles. Sadie of course was anxious to initiate play with her new friend. The two of them had fun chasing each other around. I sent Ali a text message with a picture of our guest. I then talked to her on the phone and told her about the situation. Ali wasn’t thrilled to have to deal with yet another stray dog situation. It breaks her heart to see dogs on the loose that are owned by people that generally don’t seem to care much about their well being.
I figured Lil Buddy was hungry so I brought some food out for him. I had to break up a fight when Sadie and Lil Buddy had a food stand off. In the blink of an eye Sadie had Lil Buddy pinned to the ground with her teeth showing and Lil Buddy was crying. I immediately broke it up and scolded Sadie. Within 30 seconds all was forgotten and they were playing again.
I spent almost the entire evening outside with the three dogs. I did not want to have Lil Buddy in the house in case he had fleas or worse since I didn’t know exactly how long he has been out there. I set up the small shed as a make shift dog bachelor pad complete with food, water, a dog bed and night light. Every time I would go inside Lil Buddy would jump and paw frantically at the pool cage screen to join us. Thank goodness his nails were not sharp enough to rip the screen.
Once Ali got home I introduced her to Lil Buddy, she immediately commented how cute he was and said we should keep him, already knowing what my answer would be, NO. We need another dog like a hole in the head, not to mention a Jack Russell that is very high energy and demands near constant attention.
So originally the plan was to drop Lil Buddy off at domestic animal services today. The negative of doing that is if his owners don’t claim him and he wouldn’t be adopted for some reason they put the animal to sleep eventually. Now I have no doubt Lil Buddy would get adopted. Many people prefer little dogs, especially all the condo dwellers that aren’t able to have anything else but a small dog. His cuteness should ensure a quick adoption.
Well when Ali posted about Lil Buddy on FB, one of her Humane Society contacts indicated he would try to get Buddy into there instead which is no kill. Normally the Humane Society only takes dogs that are turned in by their owners, not strays. So that is even a better option. Ali will be taking Buddy there later today.
Lil Buddy survived the night in his oversized doghouse just fine and was thrilled to see me this morning. Before I left for work I petted him one last time, confident he will wind up in a better situation from the one he strayed away from.
I did make a decent effort to find Lil Buddy’s owners. I drove around and talked to the neighbors around us and asked if they knew anything about the dog. I even stopped at Crazy Jack’s house. I have not spoken to Jack since our very vocal and nearly physical altercation years ago. I figured enough time had passed that I could nicely ask Jack if he knew anything about the dog.
Well Jack didn’t answer the door, his wife did. In the span of a few minutes I found out that they have been separated for over three years. I guess that explains why I have hardly seen him in recent years, I had no idea. I felt bad for his wife as it seems like she has been struggling to stay afloat running the household herself. I even told her that if she needed something she should feel free to ask me. She was touched by my offer considering my history with her estranged crazy husband and had tears in her eyes.
She didn’t know anything about the dog either.
Lost in the Lil Buddy shuffle was the effort I put in yesterday to recover more of Ali’s data. I used a product called EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard. This is a pretty cool program that allows you to recover data even after a drive had been formatted or even crashed. I was able to pull back several hundred of Ali’s data files that weren’t on my back up. Unfortunately Ali is going to have to go through the files one by one to identify and move them where they belong. It’s better than the alternative though.
This weekend has a lot on the docket, including a race to time on the beach tomorrow morning. Ali is feeling overwhelmed at work right now which never translates into anything good for me. It seems like there are just a lot of things to get handled.
I did a preliminary route plan for our planned road trip this summer. I am thinking about heading even further north this time, hitting Mt Rushmore, Montana, Idaho and Yellowstone Park before a swing south to Aspen. We would need to allocate a lot of time, there will be tons to see and many miles to travel if we elect to go this route.
So, yesterday Ali calls me from home saying that she got a pop up on her computer again. It wasn’t the XP Antivirus shamware but a pop up none the less so something still was not 100% cool on her system. She asked if I could just reload the computer from scratch. I told her I could but if I was going to spend the time to do that I would rather reload Windows 7 instead of XP. I told her to drop it off to me at work and I would load it up.
I did no additional back up of her data once I had the pc in my office since I had two complete backups at home on my NAS. I blew the system away and loaded it with a fresh copy of 64 bit Windows 7. Adios spyware.
While I had the pc here I opened it up and cleaned it out. In the process I noticed that the huge heat sink that is attached to the cpu was only screwed down tight on one side. Wow that explains why the variable speed fan on this thing was always running so fast (and loud). Heat wasn’t getting dissipated to the heat sink. I screwed the sucker down tight which resulted in a much quieter computer, another bonus Ali will appreciate. I was anxious to have Ali sit down in front of her quieter, faster, clean computer last night.
I gave Ali updates throughout the day telling her things were going well. Once I got home I hooked the pc back up, joined the domain, set up her mail and started on reloading some of the other apps that she uses. Once she got home I proudly showed her my handiwork. Ali was excited to have her pc back in working order.
One of the things I had to do yet was restore Ali’s various data files from the back up. Windows 7 isn’t compatible with ntbackup so I had to restore her files into a folder on the server. As I started copying data across I noticed that the location where her My Documents stuff should be was empty. “Hmm, odd” I thought to myself. I had so many other things to get done on her pc I just assumed I messed something up when I did the restore job so I started the restore again while I worked on other things.
So the second restore finishes and still My Documents is empty. Ok now I am concerned but not panicked. After all I have the second back up that was taken a week earlier. So I go into that file and look, My Documents is empty….
For those of you that don’t know much about computers, My Documents is usually home to the majority of your data. Seeing this directory empty on the back up file is a very bad thing. After double and triple checking I finally leaked the word to Ali that there could be a problem with some of her data. She did not react well.
She has TONS of stuff on her computer. The thought of losing all of it brought her to tears. She was angry at me and not at me at the same time. After all I am the computer guy, I should be responsible for ensuring her data is safely migrated. I made the assumption that having two full back ups was plenty of safety net. I had no reason to think there was a problem with missing files in the back up, yet if I would have checked it I would have seen.
I was angry. It seems the past few weeks I have been going through multiple very frustrating IT conundrums, something that I don’t run into often since I normally keep things on a pretty even keel. I couldn’t believe after all the effort I put into addressing the issues with Ali’s PC that the f’ing back up was incomplete. At one point when Ali was sobbing I blurted out something stupid like “I’m sorry, shit happens…” It was the wrong choice of words and was just a by-product of my incredible frustration as the reality of the foo-pah was upon me fully.
So I was scrambling mentally to think of any other back ups of her data I might have. I had one other back up but it was made last March prior to migrating Ali from her old laptop to the Dell. Luckily I still had the back up and it had an intact My Documents folder in it. So the good news is I pulled back some her data, the bad news is the stuff is a year old.
At least having that data back was better than nothing. Ali should be able to rebuild some stuff back between the combination of the old files and both paper records and stuff that is in Quicken or online bank statements. Of course there is also stuff that is just gone for good and there is nothing I can do about it.
I’ve had this happen to me a few times over my pc lifetime from a combination of hardware and human error. Losing data you don’t expect to lose is a bad feeling but most like negative items in your life, time dulls the sting a bit as you realize that out of what you lost, much of it actually isn’t crucial.
I told Ali that if she has stuff on her system that is that crucial we need to take further steps to insure it’s safety. I stood by her as I walked her through installing Dropbox, something I have used for quite awhile. It’s an awesome service that gives your data 9 lives. You install the small client on as many pc’s as you want, or your Iphone, save any critical data to your My Dropbox folder and that data is then replicated to ALL of the machines as well as being available from any internet connected pc by logging on to your dropbox account on their web site.
You get 2 gigs of storage space for free. It is an AWESOME service. If you want to check it for yourself use this link, it will get me a small spiff of extra storage space. https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTIzNTczNDE5
So I went to bed feeling guilty about the whole thing. Of course it’s my fault in the end, even if the situation would not have been expected by most IT people. A full back up usually is a full back up. In retrospect, I am theorizing that there was soemthing wrong in the syntax of the ntbackup command I used to back up her pc. I am guessing that the My Documents folder was never backed up.
Things could be worse, I could be Jessie James. It’s amazing how the seemingly picture perfect facade of his marriage to Sandra Bullock has been obliterated in the span of a few days. Jessie has gone from the devoted husband to a serial adulterer just like that. I find myself never being all that surprised however when these situations come to light. Marriage, if you look at it from a pure nature perspective is unnatural. Males have the primal urge to conquer and bed as many women as possible. It’s hard wired into our brains. The difference is whom does a better job of repressing that urge or not.
The other saying that I always find myself thinking when these situations come up is “Generally speaking, the more you know about a person, the more you will dislike them….”
and a letter to the editor which I can’t take credit for but I agree with 100%
There’s something very wrong here. In this country, when one is apprehended and indicted, one is entitled to a lawyer. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you.
Yet when one becomes ill and cannot afford a doctor, one will not be appointed for you.
Are we Americans such mean-spirited, self-involved tightwads that we are insensitive to the plight of others less fortunate than we? Certainly not, and I cite the recent outpouring of financial and material aid to the Haitians, as well as the medical support that came from America and Americans.
How did this massive wall of resistance to the proposed health-care reform legislation arise? One explanation that comes to mind is that we became swept up in a massive and costly campaign to distort, exaggerate and fabricate wild tales about “death panels” and the like. Misinformation was everywhere and the media led the way.
We must let the nabobs of negativity know we aren’t their lap dogs. No one says the bill is perfect; the Model T wasn’t either, but it was a starting point. In time it will become clear what works and what doesn’t and adjustments will be made.
We used to speak of the “medical profession.” Now we speak of the “health-care industry.” Bigger does not always equate with better, but it equates with more expensive. If this effort at reform fails it will only become more costly.
So last night I once again made the dogs supper and sat it down. Once again after doing so I went into the office to set Ali’s computer back up. After a few minutes I returned to the kitchen to catch Nicki in the act of devouring Sadie’s food once again.
Well they always say unless you catch a dog doing something they shouldn’t be, they don’t know what they did wrong. Well I didn’t waste this opportunity. I SCREAMED at Nicki in a voice that shook the walls. NICKI NO! NAUGHTY!
Immediately Nicki scampered back to the bedroom. I followed her back there and continued loudly scolding her. I ignored her the rest of the night and she didn’t receive any treats either. Now that this has become a pattern I will be laying in wait around the corner tonight. If she dares to venture over to Sadie’s plate again I will blow her eardrums out.
Did you know you can make your own Despair.com posters? I have had some fun on there. I made a few, only this one is appropriate for public consumption.
Ali posted a music video that is pretty amazing. I don’t need to describe it, just watch. It’s 3:53 well spent.
Ali told me she had a couple pop ups last night so evidently there is still some residual crap on her system. The only good news it isn’t the XP Security 2010 shit.
Nicki is a brat, a spiteful brat. Last night before I made their supper I pulled out two frozen bones for the dogs to work on. Sadie loves the bones and immediately took hers outside to work on. Nicki isn’t as into the bones as much since they require much more work than a typical treat. When I gave her the bone she carried it back to our closet and laid it on the floor and looked at it.
Well once I made their supper Nicki came right out to devour her bowl. While she was eating I went back and got the bone and put it back in the freezer, I didn’t want it to defrost on the carpet.
So after Nicki licked her bowl clean I gave her “desert” a piece of dried chicken breast. All this time Sadie was still outside working on her bone. Well after pigging out Nicki evidently went back to our closet to find her bone which was no longer there. She came back out to the kitchen and started staring at me. I knew exactly what she was staring for, “Where the f is my bone?” was in her eyes.
I told her she just had supper and desert, she didn’t need the bone, plus I didn’t want her chewing on a slimy bone on the carpet. Sadie is smart enough to work on hers outside. So after telling Nicki to chill out I sat down in front of my computer with my dinner.
Later on Sadie finally came in. I told her she should go eat her supper. I look over at her bowl and see her supper is GONE. That little brat Nicki ate Sadie’s food as a big F U to me. Nicki never eats Sadie’s supper, she knows the line in the sand that we have established. Yet just as a bratty child would do, Nicki figured she would eat Sadie’s supper since I didn’t give her the bone back.
I couldn’t believe she pulled this stunt. I scolded her as she looked at me almost defiantly. Ali couldn’t believe it either. I guess the lesson learned is to keep all bones in the freezer when dinner time is approaching.
I can’t believe how freaking sore my forearms are after one session of weed whacking. It feels like I went from fine to full blown tendinitis in the span of one day. I plan on using some foam pipe insulation and duct tape to make a redneck style grip cushion for the old weed whacker.