Archives April 2010

Man I am sore.  My week of exercise has included an after work run with Ali, a 300, a couple EA Active workouts at night as well as my normal 5 day a week gym visits which includes fun stuff like 50 pound weighted pull ups.  I was thinking about doing squatting and heavy dead lifts today but my back needs a break.  It may just be some cardio today.

The oil rig explosion and accompanying oil spill is pretty tragic and pathetic.  The way the leak was downplayed initially will surely be a huge issue as this spill develops into the worst environmental mess in decades.  The spill is going to destroy wildlife in a huge way.

I am amazed that the people involved in this mess do not have the ability, technology or brain power to come up with a way to stop the flow of oil from the well which reportedly is spewing out at a rate of 200,000 gallons a day.  I mean come on people, this is insanity.

Now of course there will be many opportunists that will start pointing fingers in whatever direction can generate them the most possible PR and/or dollars.  I heard some quotes from people outraged that the initial quotes of a 1000 barrel a day leak were underestimated.  Is a 1000 a barrel a day leak inconsequential?  To me whether the number is 1000 or 5000 it is a disaster of huge proportion that should have had more resources thrown at it immediately.  At least from what has been portrayed in the news, the sense of urgency was not there initially when it came to stopping the leak.

Perhaps the outrage won’t kick into top gear until people have waves of black crude crashing on their pristine beaches.  Only THEN will it become personal.  Out of sight, out of mind right?

I got the replacement hard drive for mom’s laptop on Monday and I reloaded her system on Tuesday.  At this point I have redone her laptop enough that I am pretty efficient at it.  After work I stopped by at mom’s place and got her set back up.  She also had a visit from Comcast earlier to turn on her “expanded” basic cable. 

Comcast really pisses me off.  They charged something like $30 to INSTALL the additional channels which involved just removing a filter on the line, a 10 second procedure.   Plus, what they charge monthly is incredible, for my mom to have extended basic cable it costs something like $65 a month.  This is with no premium channels at all.  Our bill at home with the same extended basic cable and internet service clocks in at around $119 a month!!  Our bill has gone up approximately %20 in the last year or so.  Imagine my anger when mom told me that she heard Comcast had plans to raise their rates further?!

The worst part is there are not a lot of viable options to their thievery.   I could go satellite/DSL but there are some big disadvantages, the biggest of which is my HD Tivo will not work with the satellite which would be a deal breaker. To get DSL at speed levels close to cable you are spending almost the same money. It’s frustrating.  You just should not have to spend $120 a month for cable/internet.

Anyway mom’s computer is back up and running, this time with a brand new 160 gig hard drive.  She should be good to go for awhile.  I had a pork and sauerkraut dinner with mom before I headed home, something that will never be on the dinner table under our roof.

I am considering doing a 300 today. It feels like a good day to beat the hell out of myself.  I haven’t done one since joining Retro Fitness.

Along with the severe lightning yesterday, we also got dumped on with a ton of rain in a very short period of time.  Now not only do we have standing water in the front of the house, we also have it in the back.    Right behind the bird feeders we once again have a mini-duck pond, complete with ducks.  Both last night and this morning there were a couple ducks back there paddling around and eating some of the left over birdseed.  I am happy to report that the pull up station is built on high ground and remains dry up to this point.

Jeremy contacted me about a deal he found on Craigslist for two weight vests.  I told him I would split the cost with him. A weight vest could come in handy for various body weight exercises like pull ups, push ups and box jumps.  The seller was offering to sell the pair for $125.

Now it is almost a given that the listed price for a Craigslist item is never what you actually pay.  Jeremy is a CL veteran so I fully expected him to perform the standard negotiation.  Well that plan was stonewalled when the seller mentioned to him that the vests used to be his son’s, who passed away.  Well to try to negotiate after being told of the situation would be impossible for me and it turned out to be impossible for Jeremy as well.  He paid full boat meaning I am on the hook for roughly $63.  It’s still a good deal though.

Awhile ago I ordered a car computer code reader/resetter on Ebay.  It was relatively cheap so I spent the $30 (including shipping) for it.  The other day I found myself wondering where the F the item was since I got notice it shipped the same day I bought it.

So I hopped on Ebay and looked up where the seller was located.  I was surprised and annoyed to see it was CHINA.  If I realized I was directly supporting the Chinese plan to rule the world I would have looked elsewhere for the product.

My annoyance grew when Saturday we came home to a notice from the post office that the package from China had to be signed for.  So Ali had to stop there yesterday to sign for the damn thing.  I’ll be sure to pay more attention to the seller location in the future, you can bank on it.

At least the code reader works.  This morning it showed the computer was once again throwing a 171 code (lean fuel mixture).  I was able to clear the light.  I am hoping a bottle or two of fuel injector cleaner will fix me up.

Behold the fruit of my labor.

As I have pointed out in the past I don’t make any effort to toe the line under strict political guidelines. The headlines recently were about the strict immigration laws passed in Arizona where illegal immigration has run rampant for years.  Arizona has taken things into their own hands, enacting tough reform while the federal government continues to spin their wheels on getting anything done.

For decades there has been a quiet tug of war going on.  The public for the most part is outraged at the blatant disregard illegal immigrants have for our laws that dictate their presence in our country.  However politicians for the most part have tried to sweep this under the rug, promising action and delivering none.  There are a couple reasons for this in my opinion.

The Hispanic population in America is exploding thanks to the general disregard for any sort of birth control in their culture, thanks catholicism! This large group of individuals are collecting more and more political clout, hence politicians are more and more wary to step on their toes.

Second, companies that enjoy padding their bottom lines by employing illegal immigrants at below minimal wage don’t want their labor force impacted.  Low wages = high profits, it’s simple math.

Well anyway, Arizona passed a law that enacts some of the toughest enforcement in the nation when it comes to dealing with illegal immigrants.  Despite my general firm support of Obama, I part ways when it comes to this issue.  Obama has condemned the legislation as too severe.  I on the other hand welcome it.

The issue seems very cut and dry to me.  If the first action you do when entering our country is to break the law, I don’t want you here.

Someone told me that weekends are for resting, for catching up from a week in the workplace, for fun.  WTF am I doing wrong?

Friday afternoon I took the final test I need to get my Windows 2008 MCITP certification.  This test was on configuring and installation of Vista / Office 2007.  You say both Vista and Office 2007 are yesterdays news, why would you test on it?  To get the certification, why else?  This test had more questions than either of the two other tests I took, 53 in total yet it was probably the easiest of the three, I scored a clean 1000. 

Passing this test wraps up this round of certification study/testing.  I set the goal in 4th quarter 2009 to update my 2003 MCSE.  It took a bit longer than I hoped but it’s done.  I probably won’t screw around with more certification for a year or two.

On Friday evening before we sat down for our traditional pizza and Tivo session Ali wanted to go on a bike ride. She is doing her first sprint triathalon (400 meter swim, 10 mile bike ride, 3 mile run) in a couple weeks and she needed to get more practice time in on her road bike.  It also gave me a chance to have more practice using my bike shoes and SPD pedals/cleats.

We went from home to Wilson Blvd and back, around a 7 mile ride.  There was a funny moment along the way.  I was trying to explain to Ali how to adjust her front derailleur to get onto the higher set of gears.  She over adjusted and managed to push the chain off the gears completely so I had her stop.  After getting the chain back on her bike I commented to Ali how I was doing better with getting my feet in and out of the pedals.

So Ali takes off and I lock my right foot into the bike and start to move forward.  In a split second I crashed into the curb and onto the grass which is on my right with my foot still locked in.  The only thing hurt was my pride, especially after just proclaiming my proficiency in mastering the SPD clips.  So I hop back up, lock my right foot in and again, crash immediately.  This time not only did I dump it, I knocked MY chain off. 

By this time Ali was a a small figure in the distance.  She had no idea I just had two incidents in a row.  As I was angrily putting my chain back on I realized why I was crashing.  I had gotten into the habit of always locking my right foot in first.  Well when you have a curb on your right and a road surface that slightly crowns to the right you will always drift that direction if you do your right foot first, causing my embarrassing spills.

I got the chain back on, used the grass as a makeshift rag to get the grease somewhat off my hands and started again this time locking my LEFT foot in first.  No crash, whew.  Luckily despite dumping myself over the curb with my right foot locked into the bike twice both my bike and my body seemed to escape any major damage. By the time I got moving again Ali was hardly visible.  I hauled ass to try to catch up but realized she was way too far ahead.  She did not realize I wasn’t behind her until she pulled into our driveway. 🙂

My Saturday was a marathon of labor.  Ali was doing a swimming/running session with Michelle.  I opted to do an all day long weeding, mulching, transplanting session.  I was sick of the landscaping in front of our house for awhile.  The topiaries that flanked our front door had become rather ugly over the years despite my attempts to keep them trimmed up.  Plus everything was visually just boring.  I finally got around to switching things up.

I first loaded the truck down with 20 pieces of sod, 25 bags of mulch, and some stuff for the garden.  I didn’t see anything at Home Depot that excited  me to put in front of the house.  On the way home I decided to stop at a local nursery.  I came across something called a canna lily.  The leaves are a deep purple with pretty red flowers.  I grabbed two of them and found small accent plants that also had purple tint to plant in between our three green things.  The truck was jam packed.

Once I got home I got to work.  I decided to place the sod and spread the mulch first.  By the time Ali got home I had moved on to planting the cana lilies.  First I had to get the topiaries dug out which was no small feat. 

The area is covered in river rock so I had to remove that first.  After being in the ground for at least 5 or 6 years each topiary had developed some big root systems, it required a lot of digging and root cutting to get them out.  I sort of felt bad removing the topiaries as I have spent a lot of time over the years trying to maintain them.  I decided I would attempt to transplant them somewhere else on the property to give them a chance to survive.

Ali liked the plants I picked out and thought they looked good in front of the house.  It was nice to get some color out there.  I also bought some smaller colorful plants to refresh two of our containers on the front porch that had some less than spectacular mum remnants in them.  I left the healthy portion of the mums but by adding the new plants made the pots look appealing again.

Despite working for hours on these projects I hade more to accomplish.  At Home Depot I grabbed a container of Thompsons Water Seal.  I waterproofed the ramp for the small shed as well as my pull up and jump station.  You know you take your pull ups seriously when you waterproof your pull up bar.

I was beat and overheated from my activities.  I was hot enough to do the first swim of the season in an unheated pool.  The water temp was 78 degrees so it felt pretty chilly for a minute or so but after that it felt fine.  Sadie was very happy that splashy splash season had started once again.

After I got out I told Ali that it was the sort of day that I would want to go to Boehringers if we still lived up north.  I’d order my old standard burger, fries and a chocolate milkshake.  Sadly Boehringers is 1200 miles away.   Well Ali had her Iphone out so she hopped on it and did a search for establishments that could fit the bill.  She came up with a place named Steak n Shake, a national chain that I never frequented.  We piled in the van with the dogs and headed out.

Steak n Shake has a 50’s burger joint theme to it, I immediately liked it.  I placed our order at the counter, a grilled cheese, a burger, two orders of fries and a chocolate (extra thin) and vanilla milkshake.  In about 5 minutes the food was up.  I paid my $13 bill and carried the food out to the van.

We dug into the food and immediately I knew we had a winner.  The burger and fries were both nearly identical to what I remember from my countless Boehringers meals growing up.  Even the milkshake was nearly perfect.  After a hard day of busting my ass it was just what I needed.  The only thing missing were the ducks in the creek.  We had to settle on looking out over a drainage ditch and 6 lanes of traffic instead.

Usually if I bust my ass on Saturday I like to make my Sunday a bit more low key.  This Sunday was not one of those days.  The first thing we did was go on another longer bike ride.  We went 10.5 miles this time, the full distance Ali would have to travel for the triathalon.  On the way out we hit a brutal headwind.  For the first section of the ride our speeds varied from a snail-like 10-12 mph.  That wind was wonderful on the return trip though.  We averaged 19-22 mph on the last third of the ride.  Luckily I had no pedal accidents this time around.

We really have been inconsistent with following through on the monthly cleaning project system that Ali created a few years ago.  Although Ali created the plan, following through on it is normally my duty.  I guess the blame for it not being consistent falls on my shoulders since I am normally the taskmaster.  Well April is kitchen cleaning month.

I was not motivated to perform this duty.  I didn’t really feel like cleaning the kitchen, I was already sore from the yard work the day prior, yet we did it anyway.  We worked across the face of the kitchen.  First we cleaned the fridge which meant removing everything from both the freezer and fridge side and wiping/washing it all down.  It is incredible just how much scuzz can accumulate inside a refrigerator.

Next we moved to the cabinets, again removing everything, cleaning, sorting and putting it back.  By the time we got done with the cabinets my motivation was gone.  I declared the pantry as good enough and we wrapped the project up. I had more work to do after all.

I wanted to get more mulch as the first 25 bags didn’t even cover half of what needed to be be done.  Ali and the dogs piled in the truck and i threw our road bikes in the back.  We wanted to take them to a bike shop to have them properly set the gear trains up as well as doing other normal maintenance.  We figured we didn’t spend much on the bikes so we can spend a few bucks to make sure they are adjusted to spec.

After dropping off the bikes I grabbed another 30 bags of mulch at Lowes and headed home.  I worked outside spreading the mulch while Ali attended to additional inside duties.  It just seemed like the chores were never ending.  After 55 bags of mulch I still had a portion of the orchard that was not done.  I’ll have to snag another 10-12 bags this week sometime.  I finished up close to dinner time.

Ali made a different sort of meal last night, a risotto with asparagus, garlic and other goodies in it.  It was good stuff.  When Ali asked me what I thought I made the mistake of saying “It’s good” followed by my rating it a 7 out of 10.  Well first off, in our household “good” is not looked upon highly by Ali since it is an adjective that I use very often.  To her, “good” is not good enough.  She wants me to get out a thesaurus and find new words.  I have tried to explain to her that when I say something is good, that means I like it, it’s GOOD.  She also viewed the 7 as too low of a rating.  I asked her if she would prefer if I lied.

Ali said it made her feel like her work on the dish wasn’t being appreciated since I just described it as “good”.  I tried to clarify and tell her I liked the dish. I always appreciate her work on meals and I always express that appreciation to her, even on small stuff.  I didn’t want the dispute to spin out of control by pointing out that many women would be exalted to have their significant other thank them for anything so I just tried to reaffirm that I liked the meal and I appreciated her hard work. 

This morning there was a hellacious storm that blew through right as I was getting ready to leave.  As I was out back with the dogs I saw a tremendous bolt of lighting blast a tree several hundred yards away.  After the strike the tree was glowing orange and the top was burning.  The dogs were terrified and ran inside, I was pretty damn scared myself.  Although if you are going to check out, being struck by lightning is probably a pretty good way to go.

I’ll post some pictures of the various projects later.

So our new washer and dryer arrived yesterday.  The delivery guys actually showed up EARLY which is unheard of in SW Fla where poor service is almost a given.  Ali wasted little time before she had laundry in circulation in our new machines.  She told me the set was AWESOME.

Once I got home I saw their awesomeness first hand.  The first thing I noticed was the size.  All of a sudden our utility room looked a lot smaller. The pedestals bring the units up to window height.  The washer and dryer are also deeper than our old units, especially if you have the front doors swung open. 

We may need to do some shelf / washing supply adjustment.  Ali can barely reach the laundry detergent at it’s current position above the washer.  With less space, the shelves on the right side of the room could also become potential hazards.   Ali said she will work on alternative layouts.

I had Ali give me a brief demo of the washing machine.  I loved all the lights and sounds as you program the machine to handle your laundry.  I stood there for a good 5 minutes watching the machine do it’s thing. It’s very cool.

Last night on the way home I finally bought some replacement lifting gloves.  I somehow managed to lose my old gloves a week or so ago.  My hands just don’t hold up well to the abuse  of endless pull ups (50 pound weighted pull ups yesterday) and heavy dead lifts. 

My old gloves were nice, they incorporated wrist wraps with additional padding.  I was disappointed to see I could not find an equivalent.  They had gloves with padding but no wrist wraps and gloves with wrist wraps but no extra padding but not both in one model. I opted for the padding over extra wrist support.

I have really been busting it at the gym lately, trying exercises and weights that I haven’t typically done in the past.  On top of that I have been trying to squeeze in EA Active workouts  at night.  I walk around every day with various parts of my body being sore.  I refuse to go quietly into the abyss of old age.

Jeremy turned me on to V a few weeks ago.  I have been enjoying the show.  It has been filling in nicely as my sci-fi fix until Caprica returns to the airwaves.  V is a good show. 

This weekend could potentially be another busy one.  This month’s cleaning project is the kitchen.  I also have had a remulching project circling overhead for a few weeks.

So last night was the first round of the draft.  The NFL is trying to further whore out the draft by dragging it out over two evenings in prime time and then finishing up on Saturday.  The Eagles grabbed a defensive end from Michigan named Brandon Graham. 

I won’t pretend to be knowledgeable about the incoming college class.  I don’t follow college football closely at all.  I have read positive stuff about the guy although I am not thrilled that he is a bit “small” for an NFL end.  We already have a small end in Trent Cole.  The Eagles have drafted a lot of defensive lineman with high draft picks under Andy Reid.  Precious few have turned into anything beyond a hill of beans.

I realized that I have been posting pictures of recent home projects almost exclusively on Facebook and not out on my site.  Doing so prevents the majority of the internet from enjoying these fantastic, compelling shots.  I threw a bunch of them together and made an update to cover the last few months. 

I spent a lot of time rebuilding mom’s laptop after it crashed a month or so ago.  I originally thought the hard drive was going bad but when I reloaded the system I didn’t have any problems so I left the hard drive in place.  Well I should have went with my original gut instinct.  Once again the system came up as unbootable the other day.  I had an old 2.5″ HDD sitting around that I originally tried to use but it appears to have issues as well.  I decided to stop f’ing around and just ordered a brand new hard drive for it which should show up next week.

I’m glad we don’t have any volcanoes in South Florida.  Too bad we have oil rigs that can blow up and sink into the gulf. 

Did you hear the story about Larry King’s hot, much younger wife banging the little league coach at Larry’s house?   Things get cranked to a new, creepy level when the coach describes having relations with the woman in Larry’s bed while Larry’s show was playing on the tv.  Evidently Shawn was quizzed on the content of Larry’s show so she needed to do her homework while getting plowed.  It’s so funny. 

There are also reports that Larry would regularly swing with Shawn’s sister,  kinky old man.

Adultery is such a common thing, it makes you wonder why it is looked down upon as much as it is.  Even older than dirt, one foot in the coffin geezers are doing it.

Another bad sleep experience last night.  I woke up at 3am and didn’t fall back asleep until much later.  I slept through over a half hour of the radio playing this morning.  In a related story, Ali told me she had a dream that I went over to confront a noisy neighbor.  Sounds pretty realistic.  However in the dream I went into the confrontation wearing a tuxedo coat, top hat and a Speedo.  Nice to know I am not the only one with f’d up dreams in the house.

Today we get our high capacity, front loading, filled with buttons and leds washer / dryer.  Ali took the day off to facilitate the delivery.  Although it’s not nearly as exciting as what I would imagine if I was taking delivery of a Camaro, it’s cool all the same.  I have no doubt I will be participating more regularly in laundry processing.  Now if the washer/dryer had a wireless NIC I could monitor their status over the internet in real time. 

Last night I was watching some impressive deadlifting by some prisoners in the jail gym.  For some reason Ali thought this was odd.

I’ve been going to the gym for  a long time, since my late teens, early 20’s. That is well over two decades for those of you that don’t want to do the math.  It’s rare that many firsts occur at the gym at this advanced stage of the odometer but today was a rare exception, I did a 6 plate lift. (315 pounds)  I have done much more weight on plate loaded machines like the leg press but I have never lifted a bar with three 45 pound plates on a side off the ground with no safety net.  After today I can no longer say that.

Over the years I have flirted with the three plate on a side feat with both my bench (best of 275) and squat (275 with very poor form and range of motion). Today I knocked down that barrier with a 315 pound dead lift.  Now anyone that knows anything about power lifting knows that 315 is warm up weight for serious lifters but for someone of my body type and muscle mass it is a decent feather in the cap.

My long arms and even longer legs makes for some challenging angles when it comes to using good form on a heavy lift.  I do the best I can, I have the bloody shins from today to prove it.

I also experimented with doing some different pull up routines that I saw on various videos by this guy.  He does a fantastic job of explaining various exercise techniques and why they work.  It was a good non-standard workout. Man are my hands a mess though.

I’m not sure how much further I want to push my one rep max in the dead lift.  It can be like playing Russian roulette with your back.  Perhaps the best route would be to go for increased reps at the same weight.

I recently started playing some Fieldrunners again, the addictive game for the Iphone.  They have added a lot of things since I played last including a pseudo-multiplayer feature that allows you establish Fieldrunner buddies and compete to see if you can top each other’s score.

My buddy Scott (aka LL Homey Cool J) also is an avid FR player so we hooked up as in game buddies.  It didn’t take long until he sent me a “challenge”.  The challenge was to amass as many points as possible in 5 minutes on one of the levels.  Homey’s score was like 78k.   So I try a few times and I can’t get my score out of the 20’s even though I am killing all of the enemies.

The next day I asked Scott how in the world he would be able to more than double my score.  He offered nothing except that he was “good”.  Yea, ok.  I suggested that he may be using some cheat that I was unaware of to amass such a huge score so quickly.  Scott laughed at my accusation.  He even brought it up on air (he’s a DJ in my old home town), I heard about it from several people on Facebook.

So last night before bed I put an intense session, determined to find the key to the challenge.  I played for an hour but despite trying every strategy under the sun the best I could muster was just over 30K.  Again today I accused Scott of shenanigans.  He offered me one piece of advice, unfortunately it was something I already tried unsuccessfully.  I may try a few more times to unlock the key to this mystery, or I may just ignore Scott’s challenges in the future. 🙂

So I called the dentist office yesterday to have them work on that math problem.  It turns out that the insurance company was only reflecting the charges for one tooth, instead of the three that were worked on during that visit. That is what explains the dollar discrepancy.  Supposedly the claim will be resubmitted and at that point the numbers will all add up, we’ll see.

I have been going back and forth with IX Webhosting regarding the repeated hacks on several files on my site.  Every few days four files would have IFRAME code injected into them.  Each time it happened I would manually clean these files and IX would run an automated clean script to search for common malicious scripts. 

Each time it got hacked I would call back into IX and would have to explain the situation over again to a new tech .  Each time the tech would be bewildered on how the hack was occurring, especially based on some of the steps that were taken up to that point to secure the site.  Each time I hung up it was with the promise of a follow up from the tech which never came. 

On Monday I called once again after the files were modified on Sunday.  This time I got a guy named Kyle.  Well thankfully Kyle seemed to be able to do something beyond running a clean script.  He went through the files by hand and found a php file in a subdirectory that was not getting detected by the clean script that had malicious code in it.  He deleted the file and later told me that he thinks that was the source of reinfection.

So far, so good.  This will be day 3 since the last hack.