Archives April 2010

Johnny goes to the dentist.  The dentist tells Johnny that his portion of the bill is $137.49.  Johnny asks the dentist if that $137.49 will be submitted as part of the claim to the insurance company so Johnny can get reimbursed for it.  The dentist says yes.

Johnny gets the statement from the insurance company.  It shows the dentist charged the insurance company a total of $177.  The insurance company paid 80% of the bill.  Johnny does some quick math.  $177 + $137.49 = $314.49  If the dentist submitted that amount to the insurance company Johnny would have been responsible for $63, not $137.49. 

Johnny will be calling the dentist today and asking them to pull out their calculators so he can go over this math problem with them. Johnny really gets angry when people try to screw him.

This weekend was another filled with non-stop stuff.  The weekend was also extremely wet, unbelievably so for April.  April is normally the middle of drought season.  It is the heart of brush fire season.  Well I don’t think we need to worry about brush fires anytime soon. It rained on both Saturday and Sunday.  The picture on the left was taken Sunday afternoon.  The past 6 months of weather here in SW FL has been totally turned on it’s side compared to the norm.

Saturday I busted ass while Ali was out doing a swim/run with her friends.  I knocked out a bunch of house maintenance including mowing the grass.  By the time Ali got back I had moved on to replacing two panels of screen on  the lanai that were torn along the spline.  In the past we always did screen replacement together.  This time I did most of the replacement myself, I seem to have mastered the technique.  One thing I learned from past experience was to tighten up the wires that hold the cage down before fully attaching the screen.  In the past I neglected to do that and it caused the screen to develop a small roll almost like a fat girl muffin top.  Both sections turned out well, probably my best replacement to date.

Just as I finished the second screen it started to rain, hard.  I still had all of my tools and materials out.  I had other things I wanted to get done yet but I didn’t want to leave all of the stuff outside in the rain.  I decided to grab one of our umbrellas and clean up the yard one arm full at a time.

I filled out all of the rebate paperwork for the appliances we bought.  I brought it into work today to mail it.  However I pulled it out of the mail bin when my co-worker, who also bought a washer / dryer Friday mentioned that you are supposed to have the serial number of the new appliance on the form.  Shit.  Well since my stuff isn’t delivered yet I have to wait till it is all under roof before submitting the form.  All of the 17 million that was allocated to the program was spent by Saturday.

On Saturday night Ali and I went to the movies.  I decided to finally use a gift card I had to a new high end movie theater in Naples called Silverspot.  Silverspot is unique as it has a small restaurant inside where they serve real meals as well as alcohol.  You can even take a lot of the food as well as alcohol into the theater.  Ali and I had a nice meal in the restaurant.  It was very convenient to have it right there.  Ali then took some wine with more conventional movie snacks into the theater.

The theater itself is very comfortable.  The seats are big, wide, reclining leather chairs that are very comfortable.  There is a ton of leg room and the theater is pitched at a very high angle so unless you have Manute Bol in front of you, you are guaranteed to have an unobstructed seat.  Even if every seat in the theater was taken you still would have no problem being absolutely comfortable. The entire facility is very high end with marble everywhere, including the bathrooms.  I can’t tell you if I ever looked at marble while taking a leak at a movie theater before. 

We went to go see Date Night, a movie that was recommended to me by a co-worker as being one of the funniest movies he ever saw.  Ali would agree with that review, she was laughing her ass off the entire film.  I think her enjoyment of the movie may have been slightly enhanced by the two glasses of wine.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie, I thought it was funny too, just not a side splitting guffaw-fest.  I’d probably rate it as a B+.

Both Ali and I were very pleased with our Silverspot movie experience.  Now of course all of this luxury comes at a price, $15 a head to be exact.

Sunday morning it was raining lightly on and off.  Despite the wet conditions, I wanted to take a bike ride to test out my bike shoes / cleats.  Originally I had ideas of doing the 17.25 mile Publix ride.  It didn’t take long until that changed.  Riding was pretty miserable.  Wet roads are not fun to bike on.  The water was spraying me from the tires and it started to rain while I was riding, adding to the wetness.  I decided to turn around at Wilson Boulevard which made the ride somewhere between 6 and 7 miles.

It seemed like riding with my feet locked into the bike definitely helped with my average speed.  Being able to utilize your hamstrings on the upstroke allows more power to be put to the road.  That power doesn’t come without a price.  Using more of my leg muscles seemed to ramp up my energy expenditure significantly.  Despite the ride being 10 miles shorter than my goal I was pretty damn tired by the time I pulled back into the driveway.

After doing some more housework I piled the dogs and tools into the van to go to my mom’s new place.  She needed a second wire shelf installed above her washer and dryer.  After picking up some materials at Home Depot I headed over there.  Almost on queue it started to POUR as I approached mom’s place.  By the time I had the dogs and the tools inside I was soaked.

Installing the shelf was pretty straight forward.  A level is your best friend when installing a shelf.  After about 45 minutes or so I had the shelf up.  Mom had also asked me to check out her tv’s.  She said she was only getting up to channel 37.  Across the parking lot she was getting up to channel 99.

I reran the auto setup routine and still the tv’s only got up to channel 37.  That’s odd.  I called Comcast for mom.  I found out that the owner of the place only has the bare bones cable package hence the limited selection.  Mom was missing some of her most favorite channels, including the Weather Channel.  We found out what has to be done to get the additional channels but it is going to require the owner to jump through some hoops which mom isn’t thrilled to request.

I waited for a break in the rain to throw the stuff back in the van.  By the time I got home the rain was picking up again.  It intensified through the remainder of the afternoon.

Sunday evening we finally sat down and did some work planning our trip out west.  If it goes as planned it will be quite the undertaking.  As it stands now we would be on the road for a total of  18 days!  We have a ton of mileage to cover and there are a ton of things to see along the way.  We tried to avoid incredibly brutal driving days like the 900 mile day we pulled last year.  Now I need to make sure I have enough vacation days to cover it all.

I still am not sleeping well.  Every single night since the concert my nights have been filled with the type of sleep that leaves you tired when you wake up.  I found myself sleeping later than normal yet waking up feeling several notches below normal.  Last night was no exception.  Before I got up to take a leak I recall closing my eyes and seeing images of an evil looking black swirly thing.  The other night I had a vivid dream where I got into a very loud, vocal argument with members of the running club which resulted in my telling them they could f themselves and I quit.

I’m not quite sure what the root of this shitty sleep is from but I certainly hope it dissipates soon.

Today was the first day of the long anticipated Florida appliance rebate program.  It is in the same vein as the hugely successful cash for clunkers program that gave people an incentive to get out of their old piece of shit vehicle and into something newer and more fuel efficient.  Well this program offers people cash to ditch older, inefficient appliances for new, efficient Energy Star rated models.  It’s all part of the program to conserve resources which is a good thing in my book.

Each state was allocated funds for this program over the past year or so and each state decided on their own how to implement the funds.  Florida decided to go the rebate on appliance route.  The state didn’t do a real good job preparing for the program, they kept changing the rules.  Initially they said that they were going to have a web site up and running two weeks before the program start date so consumers could register for a “priority number” which would give them preferential processing of their rebate.  Basically if one rebate has a priority number and another one doesn’t, the priority number submission will get handled first. Well that site never launched.  Instead they later said that you could only get the priority numbers today after 11 am, the launch day of the program.

I had talked to Ali about the program a few days ago.  She seemed lukewarm to the idea of spending the money on new appliances since even though ours that are approaching 10 years old, still work.  At the time I said fine, after all I can’t drive a dishwasher around the block. 

Well today the program launched and I caught the fever.  The 17 million that was allocated started dropping like a rock, just like they said it would.  They expected all of the money to be used up the first day even though the program is supposed to run until May 10th.  Well I decided I wanted to go look at appliances over lunch. My thought process was if it was a freaking zoo I would just say screw it. To my surprise, it wasn’t.

The appliance department at Home Depot wasn’t that full at all.  There was only one other older couple there.  I looked over the appliances and got excited about the prospect of saving money on the purchase price as well as saving money on energy costs.  I figured the things we used the most were the best candidates for upgrades, the washer and dishwasher.  Now of course there is no way Ali could stand having a washer without a MATCHING dryer so I knew a dryer would have to part of the equation.

I called up Ali and told her my plans.  She was still at home so she hurried up and met me at Home Depot.  Despite her initial rejection of the idea she was ok with us doing it, what woman wouldn’t want upgraded appliances?  I showed her the models I thought would be a good fit, a LG front loading washer dryer set and a GE high tub dishwasher.  She seemed to like the units and we agreed to move ahead.

There is one thing about the front loading washers/dryers that I HATE.  They intentionally construct them in a way that puts their openings in an uncomfortably low position.  To address the problem they will happily sell you a pedestal with a drawer in it to raise the unit for ANOTHER $200 + EACH.  It’s a blatant rip off. Once again, if this was just Shawn’s world I would have said f the pedestals.  Well Ali wanted them so we got them.

 We wound up saving between 40-50% on the cost of the washer and dishwasher when you add in the 10% Home Depot was throwing in as well as the $75 you get for recycling the old stuff.  However when you factor in paying for the pedestals that devours those savings pretty quickly.  Eh the bottom line is we upgraded some of our most used appliances and saved over $600 compared to if we made this purchase outside of the rebate program.

HD wanted to charge $100 if they installed the dishwasher.  I told them they could haul the old one out and I would handle installing the new one.  $100 to connect a hose, some screws and a couple wires, f that, I’ll do it myself.

When I was waiting for Ali to show up I was mulling around the appliance area.  Another old couple was there complaining about the rebate site being confusing and how the guidelines kept changing.  The old guy that was missing half of his lower teeth used it as an opportunity to Obama-bash.  “Yea it’s just like Obama, his mouth is always moving….” whatever that means. I tuned out the rest of his speech and told the wife what I knew about how the rebates were supposed to work.  Sit there and complain about Obama while you are in there trying to take advantage of one of his programs.  Old hypocritical turd.

My energy level has been horrible since the concert on Wednesday.  Yesterday at the gym I planned to put in 3 miles on the treadmill.  I bailed at two.  If you know me, you know that if I set a workout goal, I generally will break my ass to achieve it.  I HATE stopping short.  However in this instance I just had no gas in the tank.  I still feel like I am misfiring on a few cylinders today.

Well the hack attempts have continued on my site.  It appears every couple of days some script is coming in and injecting IFRAME code into both my main duf.net page and the pages used to display the blog.  When I discover the hacks it is quite easy for me to recover, the problem is if I don’t catch them quickly there is the possibility that someone loading my site could be redirected to something malicious which is totally not cool.

I have been on the phone with my hosting provider several times in the past 24 hours trying to figure out the source of the attacks.  FTP has been ruled out since I now have access to my content limited to my pc’s.  I suppose I will be calling back again to ride them some more.  The entire situation annoys me beyond belief.

I passed my next test for Windows Server 2008 MCITP certification.  I only have one more to go.  I’d like to knock that one out soon and be done with it.

I know I have a lot to do this weekend but my head is too clogged to extract the various items at this time.  Not like you care anyway.

Hackers hiding base 64 code in files with the .jpg extension.  Hate these f’in idiots.

So I left work early to pick up Ali for the David Gray concert.  We were taking the party van since our friends were coming along as well.  The PV works out great for these sort of situations.  The party van lived up to it’s name, the night was indeed a party. Even though I was not super excited to go to the concert, I pulled out all stops and put on my infamous “party shirt” seen to the left.  I have had my party shirt since the early 90’s.  It was the shirt I was wearing when Ali met me as a matter of fact.

So we picked everybody up and headed to South Beach.  The drive across was entertaining as alcohol was being consumed by my passengers.  We got a bit of a late start and as a result we only pulled up to the venue around 7:45 for a scheduled 8:00 concert.  By the time we got there every single one of us had to take a leak, some more desperately than others.  

There is a parking garage across from the theater but I originally bypassed it when I saw the 7 foot clearance sign.  It looked too low for the van.  However after circling the block with time ticking away and the bathroom needs of my riders growing I stopped and let Ali and Todd out who scurried to the theater to relieve themselves. 

I decided to give the parking garage a try.  The van just barely cleared the hanging 7 foot marker, whew.  As we drove up the garage one of my passengers could no longer take the pain in his bladder.  He requested the use of a large empty plastic cup which he utilized as a portable urinal.  Thankfully we had a lid.

The rest of us had to all take a leak pretty bad so we quick stepped it to the theater, found Ali and Todd and quickly headed inside to the nearest bathroom.  Originally I had thought the concert was at a big indoor stadium, like the place we saw the Eagles.  Instead the Jackie Gleason theater is nice and cozy. Ali camped on the ticket site when they become available and as a result snagged pretty incredible seats, 6 rows from the stage.

 Luckily the opening act was still playing as we found our seats.  David Gray didn’t start until around 8:30.  When you sit that close to the stage you really FEEL the music, not only does the music fill your ears, it hits your body.  It was pretty cool.  David put on a good show even for someone like me that really knew very little of his music ahead of time (you would recognize a number of his songs) Ali and the girls were in ecstasy.

Although I didn’t drink on the drive across, I tried to make up for lost time when we hit the theater, drinking four or five Miller Lites during the two hour concert.  It helped dull the edge a bit.  The concert wound up at almost exactly the two hour mark.    As we headed for the exits the lines for the bathrooms were out the door so we decided to skip them even though most of us could have used a pit stop.  I guess we figured we would find somewhere else to go, although I’m not sure where.

Ali said she would drive since she had less to drink than me.  We were a few levels up in the parking garage.  There was absolute gridlock trying to get out of the place.  In the span of 10 minutes we moved maybe 6 feet.  My need to urinate was accelerating rapidly.  I told Ali I would be back.  I hopped out of the van and walked down to ground level of the garage, searching for bathroom options.  It quickly became apparent that I would not be able to find a conventional bathroom, there was nothing around. 

My attention turned to areas that could be somewhat discreet.  There was some portions of landscaping around the garage that looked somewhat promising but I was afraid a car circling down the ramps would see me.  I turned onto one of the streets behind the garage and it was pretty deserted.  My urge to go was getting almost uncontrollable.  I spotted a BMW parked by a storm grate.  Without giving it a seconds thought I got on my knees behind the BMW and relieved myself into the storm grate. Yep, that was a first.  I returned to the van finding it almost in the same spot I left it.  I found that other riders had found equally impressive ways to relieve themselves which I won’t detail here to protect the innocent. 

It took us FOREVER to get out of the damn parking garage, I bet in total  we spent close to 45 minutes inching along.  When we finally reached the cashier I did a double take when Ali told me what the fee was, $4?????  WTF how can that be, I easily expected the charge to be five or six times that.  Well just pay the $4 and get the hell out.  I later theorized that the attendant may have been skimming fees.  I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that $4 didn’t go right into his pocket.

Ali drove until we got out onto Alligator Alley when we once again had to stop to relieve ourselves.  It seemed like there was a lot of focus on urination the entire evening.  The rest of the drive back was long.  Despite grabbing a cup of coffee at the rest stop I was fighting heavy eyelids the entire way home.  My head didn’t wind up hitting the pillow until approximately 2:30 am.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for attending the concert initially, I wound up having a fun time.  Most importantly Ali LOVED it.  Seeing her enjoy something that much brings enjoyment to me.

Last night the dogs took turns being bad.  I let the dogs outside to play for awhile.  When they came back in, Sadie, who for some reason gives us a hard time with eating her supper, barfed up a baseball size wad of grass.  Ever since we adopted her she has had this weird thing with eating grass despite our repeated attempts to correct her.  She must be part sheep.  Nothing like picking up a mucus covered ball of grass to put a smile on my face.

Later in the night I caught Nicki once again eating Sadie’s food.  Again I gave her holy hell and chased her back to our bedroom where she retreated to her bed.  I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and scolded her some more.  Ali came back as well and added her own stern scolding.

It’s a two part problem.  Sadie, who in every other situation where food is involved is happy to push her way to the front, is neurotic about eating her supper.  For some reason she is fearful of eating when Nicki is eating as well.  If Sadie would just eat her food when Nicki does there would be nothing left for Nicki to chow down on.  I might start sprinkling some dry food on top of Sadie’s dinner to make it more irresistible.

Tonight we are driving across the state with two other couple friends of ours to see a David Gray concert.  Who is David Gray you ask?  I’m not sure to be honest.  It’s some guy Ali likes. Obviously I didn’t buy the tickets. 🙂  Anyway I am going to be the chauffeur, navigating the party van across Alligator Alley.  I am dreading the drive back which will probably occur early Thursday morning.  On top of that I am working on Thursday.  I don’t want to blow a vacation day on a David Gray hangover.

I was about to buy a new web cam for Ali’s computer because when I initially tried to get our Logitech Orbitcam MP installed under Win 7 x64 I got a message it was incompatible.  Just before pressing the BUY NOW button I decided to take another look at Logitech’s site.  Low and behold they now supported Win 7.  I installed the software and did a quick test of publish to YouTube option.

I decided I wanted to get road bike pedal/shoes/cleats to give them a try.  When you use bike shoes your feet are locked into the pedals.  As a result you are able to utilize your hamstring muscles in addition to your quads.  I have heard it makes you something like 40% more efficient/powerful when pedaling.  I wasn’t sure how I would like having my feet locked to the bike.  I had flashbacks to when Ali tried to ride someones road bike and dumped it because she couldn’t get her feet separated from the pedals when she stopped. 

I decided I didn’t want to spend a lot of money to test it out.  I bought a used pair of size 48 (EU sizes) Diadora bike shoes and a set of Shimano SPD pedals and cleats.  I only laid out $100 total.  The pedals showed up yesterday so I didn’t waste anytime getting them on the bike.  Although the Diadora shoes are technically SPD compatible shoes they don’t seem like a great match for the cleats I have. I got the cleats attached but they don’t seem quite as secure as they should be.

Getting yourself hooked into the bike the first time takes some practice.  Since you can’t see the bottom of your shoe, you need to get the cleat into the clip by feel.  It took me awhile until I was able to get locked in.  Once both feet were locked in I did a small test ride up and down the street.  I immediately noticed a difference.  Being able to generate power on the upstroke really puts more oomph into the stroke.

I was able to get my left foot out of the cleat pretty easily, you simply twist your foot outward.  My right foot did not want to release.  When I finally did get it off I saw that the cleat had shifted on the shoe, a result of the less than ideal cleat attachment.  I’m hoping the used shoes will work ok, if not I’ll have to drop some bucks on new ones eventually.

I was so tired all day yesterday.  I can only assume it was from my non-stop Sunday.  I was too sleepy to even do an EA Active workout last night.  I was asleep by 9:30.  I feel a bit better today but I am thinking another early bedtime would do me good, especially since we are going to the east coast for some concert on Wednesday night.

I started studying for my next Microsoft Certification test. I need two more tests to get the MCITP for Windows Server 2008 (MCSE).  I have had MCSE certification dating back to NT 4 days. 

It used to be when you passed an exam Microsoft would send you an official certificate in the mail along with various Microsoft paraphernalia.  Now they just send you an email with a link to a pdf where you can print the cert if you feel like it.   It sort of cheapens the accomplishment a bit.

I have no professional requirements to update my certification but I try to do it anyway just in case.  You never know when you’ll have to impress someone with a bunch of letters behind your job title.

The weekend was hella-busy, even with my efforts to defuse the work by mowing grass on Thursday night.  Saturday morning I was outside by 8am doing yard work.  After weeding I needed to go around and weed whack the property since I ran out of daylight on Thursday.  You may recall that when I weed whacked a couple weeks ago my forearm tendinitis immediately flared up after being dormant for months.  Well I bought some stuff to come up with a redneck way to address the problem, some pipe insulation and duct tape.

I bought the thickest pipe insulation I could find at Home Depot and cut sections that fit the grip areas on the weed whacker. I then wrapped the insulation securely with duct tape, viola, instant padded grips.  So far, it appears that my rig job helps.  Today my forearms feel just fine.

I agreed to go with Ali to her swim lesson Saturday morning.  Ali asked if I could tape her lesson so she could get a better perspective of what she is doing right and wrong in the water.  I charged up the camcorder and off we went.  When we pulled up the parking lot was rather full, evidently they were in the middle of an informal practice kids swim meet.  Luckily it was wrapping up.

I got to meet Ali’s swim instructor, Jen.  I had heard Ali speak glowingly of Jen up to that point so it was nice to put a face with the name.  Jen looked like she was 20 something, cute and built like a swimmer, appropriately.  Once her and Ali got in the water I manned my camera and shot a bunch of footage.  I walked up and down the length of the pool, trying to keep Ali in frame.

For someone that couldn’t jump into a pool without holding her nose a few weeks ago, Ali has made great progression.  She looked smooth in the water, utilizing good form as she free styled up and down the length of the pool.  Her lesson went for 75-80 minutes.  At the end of it Ali did a couple hundred meters of swimming in rapid succession, she was breathing hard.  Swimming is tough work, especially when you aren’t used to it.

On the way home from her lesson we stopped at Walmart.  I had the battery from the Tacoma in the trunk, it was dead.  I the battery had a 3 year warranty on it.  However I wasn’t sure when I bought it and the manufacture sticker on the battery said 01/07 so I was few months out of warranty I assumed.  When I plopped the old battery on the counter the guy asked if I had my receipt, I told him I did not.  I figured that was that and I would be paying full price for a new battery.

Well imagine my surprise when I brought the new battery over and the same guy tells me I have a $60 pro-rated credit for the old battery!  How in the world….  Hey I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I simply said “Awesome!”   Evidently he ran the serial number of the old battery and that is what he came up with.  I appreciated the effort.  He could have simply taken the old battery and not looked into it any further.  In fact, I expected him to do just that, it is Walmart after all.  I walked out of there surprised I was just treated to a favorable customer service experience at the big W.

Saturday afternoon I decided to do a another short work out video. Lately I have been incorporating dead lifts into my routine.  I thought I would try to break the 300 pound mark on tape.  I knew I had to video it if I wanted Jeremy to accept the accomplishment as fact.  Here you can see the results of my efforts.

Sunday was a killer day.  We had a big race to time which meant another dreaded 4am wake up call.  We had roughly 900 entries for the race, making it the second largest race we ever timed.  This race was to benefit the Naples Philharmonic.  It was unique for a couple reasons.

  The 10K distance is one that is rarely seen in our area, a 5K is the distance of choice nowadays for most races.  The race featured live music performances by philharmonic members both at the start and along the course which added a cool twist.  The timing process went smoothly with the normal amount of problems caused by human error. Ali ran the race as well, turning in a good time for the distance.

After the race we had to go directly to my mom’s place to get her moved.  Ali dropped me off so she could go home, let the dogs out and then come back.  By the time she got back all of the big/heavy items were moved.  Mom had a co-worker and her boyfriend help.  Luckily mom didn’t have tons of stuff to move.  She has been working on getting smaller items moved for the past week or so.  We had the big items moved in not much more than an hour.  It was sort of strange being able to move somebody by simply carrying items across a parking lot.  We didn’t use any carts or dollies, we just carried the stuff.

Shortly after the stuff was moved the skies opened up.  It rained hard for quite awhile, we were lucky we got done when we did. After the stuff was moved I turned my attention to getting stuff hooked up/put back together.  I hooked up mom’s tv’s, computer, phone and put the day bed back together.  By the time we left, mom’s new place didn’t look too bad at all considering she just moved a couple hours prior.  Sure there are lots of little things to unpack and put away but she had all the core items up and running to be able to get by.  It was the first time Ali got to  see mom’s new place in person.  She agreed with me that it was a definite upgrade.

On the way home from mom’s Ali napped in the car, she was exhausted.  As soon as we got home she retired to the bedroom where she napped for two or three hours.  Although I could have certainly used a nap as well, I had too much to do.  I had to perform all of the typical post race duties which includes producing results, updating the web site, perform a timing chip inventory and organizing and putting away the bins that hold various race components.  As Ali caught up on her Z’s I muddled along, moving on to more housework like sweeping the kitchen, cleaning the counters and pool maintenance. 

Sunday evening I was working on processing some of the pictures of the race to upload to the web site.  As I did I noticed that Picasa was doing some sort of processing in the background.  When I dug into it I saw the program was doing face mapping.  It was going through my 9,000 pictures and grabbing faces out of each and every shot.  It was pretty amazing how accurately it could crop out faces from shots, even grainy or large group shots.  Once it cuts out faces you can start naming the individuals.  Picasa will then group the photos by person, allowing you to easily show you all the pictures that have that face in it.  It’s pretty cool stuff, especially for absolutely free software, Thanks Google!

Yes you read that right.  I no longer want a 2010 Camaro, I want a 2011.  🙂  Yesterday Chevy announced the changes for the 2011 model year.  The highlights were  a slight bump in the published horsepower on the V6 model, the Synergy Green color being available on all models for a limited time and HUD on the 2SS and 2LT models.  Only the last item perked my ears up.

HUD stands for “Heads Up Display”.  HUD projects pertinent info on to the windshield so you can keep your eyes on the road.  On the Camaro it will show the following:

The announcement of the HUD made the decision to wait for the 2011 model an easy one for me.  However it really isn’t much of a sacrifice on my part.  The auto industry seems to continually work in a time machine.  Although we are still early in 2010 I could order a 2011 at the end of April.  They are scheduled to start building them in early June.  Since the HUD is only available on the 2SS(v-8) and 2LT(v-6) it pretty much eliminated any question in my mind over which model I am going to get.

There has been a lot of news recently about more bullshit Pope Benedict was involved in regarding covering up the rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by the Catholic church against children. It disgusts me that billions of sheep look at this man as the spiritual leader of their faith.  To me the guy looks like pure, unadulterated evil.  Look into this guys eyes.  If I believed in the devil I’d say Pope Benedict is the spitting image of him.

We have a busy weekend coming up so to try to soften the blow I was very busy last night.  I mowed all of the grass, ran the dishwasher and did a couple loads of laundry.  After that I had to hop on the computer and put in a bunch of race entry forms for the big race we are timing on Sunday.

After timing the race I have to go directly to my mom’s place to get her moved to her new condo.  It’s going to be a busy one.

Ali cracked her head during a swimming lesson on Wednesday. Yesterday she seemed to be showing some signs of a mild concussion.  Her head and neck hurt, she was tired and didn’t have much of an appetite.  Hopefully a good night’s rest helps her clear the cobwebs.