Archives March 2010

Well first off for those of you that actually visit my “real” blog as opposed to seeing the copy that is sent off to Facebook, you will immediately notice things look totally different.  I installed a new theme over the weekend.  I like the look of it.  It’s modern, easy on the eyes and comfortable to read.  However the theme didn’t change just because I felt the need to switch things up.

Late last week I got a call from my mom that when she tried to load my blog her browser popped up a warning that the site was known to be malicious.  It was IE’s smart screen filter.  I got a report from Joe that he saw the same thing.  I immediately went into my site and took a look around, looking for obvious signs of a hack such as files with recent timestamps.  I didn’t find anything obvious but I did remove a couple add ins that I read could potentially be problematic.  After making the changes the site seemed to load normally.

Well on Saturday Ali was looking at the blog and all of a sudden had a flurry of shit pop up on her screen.  When she told me about it I immediately recognized it as that damned bogus Anti-spyware shit that has been spreading like mad. 

This stuff is insidious because it looks very legitimate to the untrained computer user.  If you interact with the “program” it cripples your system and if you are unfortunate enough to be really hoodwinked you could actually wind up spending money to buy this program that is actually f’ing up your computer. Well now I had two problems, fixing Ali’s computer and figuring out why the f she got it while my blog was up.

 Ali has been married to a computer guy long enough to know to not a touch a thing when something weird comes up.  She swore she did nothing when she saw it.  If that is true, it makes this latest iteration of this shit even worse because that means it managed to infect her computer without any other interaction.

I was mad.  I was mad at the assholes that write this shit, mad at Sunbelt Software whose Vipre program I had running on her system let the malware through and mad at the idea of figuring out what the F was going on with my site. 

Getting the malware off Ali’s system was arduous.  As I mentioned, Vipre totally missed the malware and didn’t even notice that Ali’s computer had been infected with a full scan.  The malware does it’s best to stop you from removing it by disabling your ability to run one of the best malware removers out there, MalwareBytes.  I had to pull out a lot of tricks to get rid of this damn thing which I think I finally did on Sunday, hopefully.

When I turned my attention to my blog to see what went down I again did not find any clear signs of tampering.  Both my site ftp password and blog password were strong, I can hardly imagine anyone got in that way.  There is the possibility there was a temporary DNS redirection, I’ve seen that before.  But I didn’t want to take any chances, hence the theme change.  Changing the theme changes the majority of the files used to display the blog content.  Since the change I have not noticed any weirdness at all.  Using a fresh theme also has increased the performance of the site.  The new design loads much quicker than the old design that was sort of patched together.  Of course if any blog reader notices anything odd please let me know.

On Friday evening I worked on getting Ali’s new bike put together.  Since it is the same model as mine which I also put together, putting Ali’s together wasn’t much of a problem.  Ali liked the way it looked.  I thought the pink was cool too, for a girl.

On Saturday we went to a big parking lot so Ali could get comfortable on the bike.  The only bike she has ever ridden was the mountain bike I taught her to ride on back early in our relationship.  She was a bit shaky at first but after about 15 minutes of cruising around the lot she was doing much better.  She said it felt good. Later on Saturday we stopped at Sports Authority so Ali could get decked out with various accessories for her new wheels.

On Saturday afternoon we went to a memorial service friends of ours had at their home.  Her brother died about a month ago.  I was impressed at both the size of the house and the service itself.  The pastor/minister that ran the service had everyone in the room introduce themselves and talk about their relationship with the deceased.  I felt awkward since my contact with her brother was extremely limited at a Super Bowl party a couple years ago.  I managed to get out a few sentences that didn’t sound terribly awkward.  The service was touching.  Even though I didn’t know him very well I felt myself feeling emotional various times.  The whole dying/getting old thing, it just sucks ya know?

Over the weekend I mowed and weed whacked the property.  Even though the grass hasn’t grown much in the past couple months due to the various cold snaps it still was looking pretty ratty in spots.  Plus mowing is a good way to accelerate dog shit decomposition as well as mulching up the various twigs, leaves and other stuff that falls off the trees on our property.

I mowed Saturday and weed whacked Sunday.  I had a weed whacker problem that had me on the verge of smashing it on to the ground violently. I have two weed whackers, an older Homelite that I bought when we moved in that was missing a primer bulb and a newer one I just got a year or two ago.  The newer one would not stay running.  It would only run in the half choke position and if I applied throttle it would shut off.  I struggled along with it for as long as I could stand until I decided to try to get the old one running.

I stole the primer bulb off our roto-tiller.  It took me awhile but I finally got the old one to fire up and I used it to finish up the work.  I was right on the edge of having a dad-like meltdown where whatever was within reach would be in danger of being broken in two.

Speaking of dad, we received an email over the weekend that he officially had postponed the Ireland trip.  Evidently dad has finally picked out where his next residence is going to be.  The combination of moving in a couple months and a laundry list of immediate improvements he wants to make to the property made the idea of a late summer trip overseas less than practical.

I am certainly curious how this latest destination works for dad.  It’s in some town in western PA, two hours NORTH of Pittsburgh.  By my calculations that would put him right near Lake Erie.  Horrible weather immediately jumps into my head when I think of that area.  The place has a massive 18 acres of land for the various animals he plans to stead there.  Again I don’t quite get it.  When he was in New Mexico he dealt with the reality of maintaining lots of land and at least from afar, it didn’t seem like he particularly cared for doing all that manual labor at his current age and physical condition.

He also spent a small fortune in a short period of time fixing up the place in New Mexico.  Again, it sounds like he is buying another fixer upper. Hey it’s his money, it’s his life, if he is happy there then more power to him.  I just hope he is.  Ever since he retired he has been searching for the situation that will make him content in retirement, he hasn’t found it yet obviously.

Wow Jessie James really has some bad timing huh?  Hey tons of people cheat on their spouses.  Not very many have that cheating exposed right after their wife wins an Academy Award.  Way to go Jess.  I told you Sandra looked like she had a lot of junk in the trunk.

So the health care bill actually passed last night.  That is a pretty amazing thing considering the hundreds of millions that has been spent to defeat it.  I read that over 4500 lobbyists were throwing money left and right in order to affect the outcome of the legislation.  That is f’ing disgusting.

As I have said before the final bill surely is a huge compromise filled with many concessions that most of the public would find very annoying.  Equally annoying is the process that lead to the final passage of the bill.  But now that it looks to be a done deal I am trying to look more at the big picture.  Despite the band wagon “it’s socialism” jumpers, there are many important, significant changes that will come about, eventually, from this bill. 

Changing health care is something that has been talked about since Nixon yet Obama was the only president with the determination to not let it die on the vine like others before him.  Despite being chewed on mercilessly by the republican spin machine, Obama never gave up.  Now only time will tell if what he has fought so strongly for was worth it in the end.  Now if he could fight equally strong to get us the F out of the Iraq/Afghanistan.

Even though Spook has been gone for a few months we still have had reminders of her last few weeks on this planet, a lingering smell of cat piss in the office, specifically behind Ali’s desk.  So today we ripped Ali’s corner apart, pulled the desk away from the wall and hit it with everything we got.  I soaked the area with Nature’s Miracle and then later went over it with the carpet cleaner repeatedly. I first used Resolve carpet cleaner solution and followed up with the Nature’s Miracle brand of solution. 

Hopefully we will have eliminated the stench once and for all.  It’s not the sort of thing you want to remember your deceased pet for.

I have had more reports of people getting some weird shit going on when they load the blog. I jumped into a different theme to see if the problem persists. So far it seems clean to me. Please contact me if you see any bullshit going on.

My knees have been doing quite well for several months even with a regular running program, 300’s, 275 pound dead lifts and more.  Well the string of good fortune came to an end this week.  My knees don’t feel real good right now although I don’t think it is anything a few days of rest won’t correct.  The funny thing is the cause, clutter.

Well actually clutter is indirectly responsible, teamed up with laziness.  Early this week I was having problems with my home server so I went into the hobby room to work on it.  I knew I had to be in front of the screen for a little while so I looked over to Ali’s area for the small office chair we have in the room.  Well that chair had become the home for a box of junk so instead of going over, taking the box off the chair and wheeling the chair over I decided to just get down on my knees in front of the server.

Well putting pressure on my knee caps for any length of time is a prescription for trouble.  I might have been on my knees for a total of 5-10 minutes but that was all it took to aggravate them.  Ever since my kneeling session my knees have felt sore.  Lesson learned, less clutter and move the damn box.

I read the Eagles have been busy cutting/trading  players, mostly ones that were worthless.  Some of the names that are gone include Kevin Curtis, Darren Howard, Reggie Brown and Sean Andrews.  Besides Curtis, I am fine with the Eagles parting ways with pretty much all of these players, especially Sean Lazy Big Baby Andrews.  The guy had tons of physical talent, too bad he didn’t have the work ethic to match it.  The way he has strung the team along the past two years made me sick.  So long Sean, maybe you can find another team to whore some money from, ya bum.

I have a bunch of things I’d like to get done this weekend, as usual.  Ali’s new road bike is supposed to show up today.  It’s the same model as what I have which is low end on the road bike scale but more than adequate for beginner cyclists such as ourselves.  I’m sure I will be assembling it tonight for her.

My first workout at Retro Fitness went well.  I dead lifted 275 pounds without having to worry if I was under surveillance, did cardio on both a recline bike with it’s own personal tv and in the cardio theater while watching Bill& Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  Two big thumbs up so far.

I heard a very funny commercial on one of the Stern channels on the way back for hotornot.com  hotornot has been around for awhile, the premise was a picture of someone comes up and you simply rate their appearance on a scale of 1-10.  Well they evidently expanded it to be a dating site.

Some of the tag lines from the spot are things like ” if you are lucky you could be a 7 and score an 8, if you are REALLY lucky you could be a 5 that scores a 9!”  The best line of all is the last one where they say “hotornot.com, because you don’t need another f*cking “friend”…”  (Facebook reference)

I am officially a member of Retro Fitness.  I joined on my way home last night.  I can hardly wait to check out all of the stuff today.  It always livens up your routine when you start in a new place.

I have not been sleeping soundly at all the past several days.  I’ve been waking up frequently.  Luckily I have been able to fall back asleep pretty quickly but I wake up feeling rather exhausted.  I wonder what cycle the moon is in.

Florida, like most states has money problems.  Florida is one of the few states that does not have an income tax however they make up for it by taxing everything else under the sun.  One of Florida’s big revenue streams of course is tourism and the tax dollars generated by it.  The recession that followed many years of living high on the hog caught Florida by surprise like everyone else.  As a result they now have been coming up with “creative” ways to both save and generate money. 

This year they were nice enough to raise vehicle registration and drivers license service costs by 50%. 50%!!!!!!  They also had the lame idea of selling interstate toll roads to private industry (that fell through thankfully).  They also froze all state employee salaries (applied to us as well) .  Ok fine, hey times are tough right? 

Well now there is a new proposal in Tallahassee to F with our pension plans.  One of the benefits of  committing yourself to a state job is the pension plan.  The Florida Retirement System (pension) is one of the best run pension plans in the nation and is fully funded as opposed to running in the red like most pension plans. 

Well some stuffed shirt politician thought this would be another great way to save money.  He has proposed a myriad of changes to the plan, none of them good. Some of the most notable changes are pushing back the age where you can receive full pension benefits to 65 (from 62), changing the benefit calculation percentage down as well as averaging your salary over your entire career instead of your top 5 earning years and not grandfathering in current employees. 

Take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of somebody that has spent 25+ years in the system.  You were probably looking forward to retiring in 5 years, enjoying your retirement and pension that you earned over three decades of work.  Now, just like that there is the possibility that not only do you have to work 3 additional years, you will receive significantly less benefits for doing so.  That is total, unadulterated bullshit.

To f with tens of thousands of state employees retirement benefits to address a short term budget issue is ridiculous.  Do you think if the money crunch subsides they will magically restore the prior benefit levels? Of course not.

Imagine if you worked at something for 30 years with the promise of a Corvette at the end of it and near the finish line they tell you “sorry, you get a used Dodge instead”  To further muddy the situation, a state worker can’t expect to get any support from the general public since there is such an anti-government sentiment.  I’m sure the general consensus would be “Eh F the state workers and their pension”  It’s one of those bandwagons that is easy to jump on unless you are the one that is getting the shaft directly. 

The most hypocritical part of it all is the representative who is so eager to axe state worker benefits is a home owner in Naples with a property on the books for 5.8 million.  It’s so easy to propose slashing somebody else’s retirement income when you are filthy rich.

So I cancelled my membership to Planet Fitness yesterday.  Of course I had just been billed so I am technically a member until mid-April.  My plan is to stick around PF for a day or two to get the word out to the people I would like to see come with me.  I was debating if I wanted to write a letter to Planet Fitness corporate to let them know exactly what sucks about their franchise. 

I just noticed yesterday that the owner may have been anticipating the opening of Retro and started to make some changes to make PF seem less nazi-like.  Gone is the sign by the bathrooms with a dozen rules that members have to obey.  Gone are the signs back in the free weight area that threatened members with immediate expulsion if they grunt, drop weights or swear.  I actually didn’t smell sewage yesterday either.  Oh well PF serves it’s purpose I guess, it’s cheap.  I won’t miss it one bit I can pretty much assure you.

Last night Ali informed me we had a guest, in our toilet.  It was a full size tree frog.  I would be shocked by this if it hadn’t already happened before.  Somehow the frog got into the drain pipes of the house, came up into the toilet and swam through the water until he made it to the bowl.

Ali was nice enough to leave the frog for me to capture.  I corralled our little guest in a big plastic cup and promptly returned him outside to the pond area.  It should be big upgrade from living in the septic system.

I emailed my dad about the latest Moto Guzzi situation.  He said he contacted the guy that worked on the bike.  The mechanic said that the ethanol that is now in most gas could be causing the problems with the float sticking.  The ethanol could attack the rubber in the needle/seat assembly.  The bike is so old that it is supposed to run on regular leaded gas.

I replied to dad that it would have been nice if the mechanic would have let him know of the potential problem before dad dropped a good chunk of change for all of the work that was done.  Dad gave me his blessing to sell the bike if I want to.  After hearing what Dad spent to get it running, I feel obligated to recoup as much money as possible for the bike to give to him.  The only problem is I don’t think there is much of a market for a 1984 Moto Guzzi with carb and electrical issues.

I had heard from a couple people about a new gym that recently opened up near work.  On Friday I cut my workout short so I could pop over there and check it out.  The gym is a chain called Retro Fitness.  They put it into a space that used to be occupied by a Walgreens.  I walked in and instantly knew my days of looking at a lunk alarm were soon to end.  The place is spacious and filled with brand new equipment.  All of the cardio equipment has it’s own dedicated lcd tv.  The free weight area is large and COMPLETE.  They have weights up to 120 pounds instead of the measly 60 pound cut off at Planet Fitness.  They even have a squat rack, something that PF bans because it attracts too many lunks.  Retro Fitness also has a theater cardio room which is what it sounds like, cardio machines in a movie theater.  If you prefer you can do your cardio while watching a movie on a 22 foot screen. Oh and the place doesn’t smell like sewage either.

There are only two negatives which are insignificant.  It costs $20 a month instead of $10 at PF, still very cheap, and it is a little farther away than PF, again no biggie.  So now my plan is to spread the word to my inner circle at Planet Fitness in the hopes that I can get them to jump with me.  I’ll cancel my membership at PF and hopefully be working out at Retro Fitness sometime this week.  I am hoping PF doesn’t give me any bullshit when I go to cancel. I’m excited about the prospect of getting away from Planet Fitness with their laundry list of bullshit rules and most importantly the f’ing lunk alarm.  I’ve always felt like I was sacrificing part of my soul by working out in that place.

We had another nice weekend weather-wise although it was ultra windy on Saturday.  The new front screen door was utilized heavily over the weekend.

On Saturday we weeded which included the garden.  Despite the cold temps that killed a bunch of our garden we still are getting some nice production as you can see.  Ali pulled a PERFECT carrot out on Sunday.  Many of you may remember the mutant carrots we produced last year.  This year we raised the area that we planted carrots in so the soil would not be compacted.  It looks like the effort was worth it. In addition to the carrots we have been harvesting great quality beets, peas, broccoli, romaine lettuce  and spinach. 

Ali was gone a good portion of Saturday, first at a Phi Mu luncheon and then she went to a concert with a girlfriend of hers.   I spent a couple hours doing data entry for work.  It was extremely tedious, by the end of it I was starting to lose my mind. 

I also sat down and watched Dark Knight again.  I enjoyed it but not as much as seeing it the first time.  I also played WoW until after 11.

On Sunday, despite the time shifting one hour forward I wanted to be productive out of the box.  I worked on getting my various Sunday house chores knocked out early.  Ali and I talked about running during the day so I didn’t want to have to do a shitload of work after running.

We decided to go back to the North Collier Regional Park to run, the place that also houses the water park.  The temps were nice, but not swimming nice for me.  The park was open and I saw people in the water!  Well, I saw kids in the water, I didn’t see any adults getting wet.  They HAVE to heat that water, our pool is at 66-67 degrees right now.

We had a great three mile jaunt around the park.  I love running there, it’s so scenic and diverse visually.  The park is a bee hive of activity.  Everywhere you look there are people being active which is great to see.  I get so used to seeing so many human sloths day to day, I sometimes forget that there are some people that actually “get it”.

After our run we had a couple errands to run.  First we stopped at Best Buy.  I was pricing a flat screen tv’s in the 32 inch range.  On Friday at Sam’s Club I saw a 32 inch LG 720P set for $360 and change.  I was curious what Best Buy would come in at. Surprisingly they had nothing that was a similar deal on display.  My thoughts are to replace the monstrous conventional tube 32 inch set in our bedroom.  The thing weighs a TON.  In conjunction I would like to update the Tivo in there since an upcoming Comcast change is going to limit the existing non-hd device to only getting the major networks.

While we were at Best Buy we also looked at washer/dryer sets.  We got sucked into a 5 minute sales pitch from some guy despite us telling him we weren’t looking to buy right now.  Both Ali and I would definitely like to update our set sometime soon.  The new models save a lot of water/electricity in comparison to the older conventional models.

While I was there I was taken in by some baseball game that was running on a PS3.  I took a couple of at bats and failed miserably, the highlight was fouling off a couple pitches before striking out.  The graphics in the game were simply amazing.  The detail and realism that is possible on the new consoles just blows me away.

After a quick lunch at Panera we headed to Sports Authority.  Ali needed to get a new pair of swimming goggles for her new endeavor, swimming.  She started swimming lessons last week.  It was her New Years resolution, to learn to swim. 

Once we got back I decided to finally work on the Moto Guzzi.  The last time I took the bowl off the one carb I noticed the float assembly was sticking which was surely causing the fuel leakage issue I was seeing.  When I took the bowl off this time the assembly felt just fine, no binding.  I still removed the float as well as the needle and seat that I replaced previously to verify all looked well, it did.  The only difference between now and when I checked it last was the carb was dry yesterday and wet with gas originally.  Perhaps something in the gas is gumming up the works.

Well I wanted to give starting the bike another try so I hooked up the battery charger.  Instantly I knew I had a problem when I saw the voltage on the battery didn’t cross 4 volts.  Dad had mentioned the bike has some “electrical problems”.  The battery is almost new, it shouldn’t have failed already.  Well 5 hours of charging failed to raise the voltage level, the battery is f’d.

 I suppose I will snag a battery for it but I am just about at the limit of the time/money I will put into the bike.  To be honest my desire to ride a motorcycle  has waned significantly.  It seems like since my dad brought it down I just happen to catch the “Motorcyclist dies in accident” headline more and more.  A Camaro will deliver more thrills without the risk of getting taken out by some blind q-tip.

Back to the grind.

This is my box.  I have had this box for at least 30 years if not longer.  I have no idea where the box came from, who gave it to me or anything else about it’s origination.  I just know it’s my box.  I have a long pattern of holding on to material items for incredibly long periods of time.  This box, my 7th grade camouflage t-shirt and 20 year old lunch box are all good examples.

As you can see my box is adorned with stickers, mostly of NFL teams.  When I was young I had a great idea.  I wrote a letter to each and every team I could get an address for and asked them if they could send me stuff.  Looking back, I am curious how I actually got the addresses to send the letters to since the internet was not around.  Anyway as you can see, several teams responded to my request.  I have stickers from the Saints, Cowboys, Eagles, Broncos, Redskins, Oilers, and one baseball team, the Orioles.

When I started actually receiving these items back in the mail I can’t describe how excited I was.  Getting an envelope filled with stickers and a letter on official team letterhead was more than enough to blow the mind of a kid that just hit double digits in age.  I’m not quite sure how I decided that my box would be an appropriate item to adorn my prized stickers.  All I know is the stickers and the box have been with me forever. Based on the Broncos 1977 AFC Champs sticker my approximate age at that time would have been 10.

Nowadays the box just sits quietly on my computer desk.  For years it has housed diskettes that I no longer need/use.  It also has two expired credit cards as well as the ticket to the Eagles/Panthers NFC championship game I attended.  I need to repurpose the box to hold more valuable items since it holds such a sentimental value to me.  Perhaps when I kick it my ashes could go in it, that would be cool.

This weekend I have more office work from home projects to straighten out.  All week I have been struggling with issues at work, my brain hurts.  Ali is going to be gone a good portion of Saturday so I should have plenty of time to work on stuff.

We might go for a run on Sunday.  Last night I felt a slight twinge in my right ass cheek, surely from my heavy dead lift / power clean session.  I am hoping I am twinge free before I run again.

Ever since I went back to Planet Fitness, home of the lunk alarm, they have had an issue.  By the back door of the gym that leads to the dumpster area, there is a small notch where they have a few pieces of equipment.  That area has always stunk.  I remember back when I rejoined talking to the owner about it.  He said something about how he was all over the management company to get it taken care of.  The smell was distinctly that of sewage.

Well the smell has never gone away and gym staff has tried to address it by putting multiple air fresheners back in that corner which did nothing but make the smell mutate into french vanilla sewage.  Well the past couple days the stench has become more powerful, you could smell it walking in the front door.  The staff had towels around the base of the rear door held down by 25 pound plates, additional stationary air fresheners and a staff member patrolling the area regularly spraying even more air freshener.

You can imagine how disgusting this combination smelled.  I saw somebody up on a ladder looking at pipes in the ceiling.  Hopefully it’s gotten bad enough that they actually address it.  If I owned the place I would be going ballistic on the property owners.  Exactly how many people are you going to sign up if they start to dry heave as they take the tour?

Yesterday at the gym I did some stuff I don’t normally do, power cleans and heavy dead lifts.  A power clean is when you start with a barbell on the ground and wind up with it at shoulder height in front of you.  In one powerful move you bring the weight off the floor and snap it up to your shoulders while dipping your legs a bit.  I did three sets of eight and that was plenty for me.

Dead lifts are a staple exercise in the 300 but they are with a relatively light 135 pounds.  Yesterday I pushed the weight all the way up the 260-270 pound range, doing three reps at the max weight.  It felt good to see an impressive looking amount of weight on the bar and be able to get it from the floor to upright.  However doing heavy dead lifts also can be an express ticket to back pain if you aren’t careful.  It felt good to do these core power moves.  I hope to rotate them into my routine more regularly.  Doing a 300 pound dead lift would be a nice little feather.

All week I have been screwing around with ISA 2006, changing things during the day and then seeing if they work after hours.  I STILL do not have it working.  I have no reason to implement ISA 2006, what I have in place works fine.  But now I am taking this as an insult to my technical prowess, I have to get it working just for personal satisfaction.  I had one small victory last night after I successfully was able to ftp out to the internet through ISA.

  Tonight I am going to mom’s to return her laptop.  Last week her windows install got corrupted somehow.  I reloaded it with the system restore cd’s but I have to get it reconnected to her dsl connection.  I’m going to score a free dinner out of the deal.