Archives 2010

A lot of stuff to cover from the long three day weekend so grab the large size coffee.

Our Friday night was consumed mostly by  preparations for the race.  Ali and I entered close to 150 paper applications.  This race was a blueprint for what is wrong with our registration process.  In total the race had around 650 entries.  560 of those entries happened in the last week and the majority of those were on paper during the last couple days.

This is the behavior that our registration policy has cultivated.  Trying to reprogram people to get into the habit of registering online and early will be a tough task for sure but necessary if I am going to continue to be involved in the process.

Crawling out of bed at 4:10 am Saturday morning was not welcomed.  By the time we arrived on site around 5:30 there was already a bee hive of activity going on.  The pre-race scene was hectic.

One of the volunteers asked if she could plug her coffee pot into my surge protector.  I told her with all of the halogen lights plugged in that adding a coffee pot could pop the circuit.  She said she didn’t think it would pull much power so she plugged it in.  Less than a minute later the pavilion was dark.

Well now there was a mad scramble.  Luckily the event director had a key that got us into a room that had the breaker box.  I flipped the breaker and we had power again.  What I didn’t realize was that door also had an alarm system on it.

About a minute after restoring power the alarm starts blaring, very loudly.  Well obviously I didn’t have a code to kill it so we had no choice but to let it blow.  I am sure any neighbors within earshot loved hearing that racket at 6 am.  We figured cops would show up and turn it off.  The alarm continued to sound for a good 10-15 minutes but cops never came.  Then suddenly it stopped.  I am not sure if it just resets after a period of time or was turned off remotely. Either way it was welcomed silence.

Ali and I had a hectic scene as well at the day of race registration table.  In between trying to frantically get all of the last minute runners into the system we were repeatedly interrupted to handle screw ups.  We had 12-15 people that signed up, got their number but then did not have the corresponding timing chip available.  This happens when somebody in the registration area screws up.  These mistakes snowball at the end into a bunch of people with inaccurate times after the race.

Ali was planning to run in the race with her girlfriends so I did the last 15 minutes of data entry solo.  We had dumb asses scrambling up to the table late, I think we got some paper shoved at us as late as 7:25. (race starts at 7:30) I had more registrations to do but I had to get to the start line to time the race.

As I was quick stepping it towards the start line I heard the race director call my name on his bull horn.  I had a second bull horn with me and I yelled “DON’T START YET” as I approached.

So the race starts and I have to run back to the finish area to enter the stack of late entries.  I was entering people right up until a minute before the first runner crossed at the 16 minute mark, it was pretty nuts.

The timing system worked fine as it always does.  I was surprised when I saw Ali come across the finish line under the 29 minute mark.  She hadn’t run a 5K that fast in quite awhile, I guess her track practice has been paying off.

After the race was over I packed up and headed home solo.  Ali was scheduled to run another 3 miles in addition to the 5k and she was going to swim with the girls after that.  I got home and spent the next couple hours attending to my normal post race duties.

Randall was supposed to drive over on Saturday to hang out for a couple days.  Earlier in the week he said something about showing up around noon.  I joked to Ali that means he will be over around two.  Randall stretched the window even further not showing up until closer to 4.  His tardiness was actually a good thing, it gave me time to get some more stuff done around the house.

Randall came bearing gifts, flowers and wine for Ali, dried chicken breast for the dogs and a card with Carraba’s gifts cards for me as thanks for some electronics I gave him a few months back.  He got a bunch of the stuff at the Ave Maria Publix.  He wanted to see the place for himself after reading about it in my blog. Sadie and Nicki were very excited to see Randall as well, he likes to play with them.

I asked Randall if he wanted to go see Expendables that night.  Ali had an option to go to a party being held by her track coach so she was fine with us going.  Randall was fine with going so I bought tickets online for Silverspot, the high end luxury theater.

We wound up just grabbing food at the theater, we both got the mini-burger platter which was good.  We headed in for the movie with about 10 minutes to spare.

We were sitting right next to a woman and her daughter.  The kid was only 10 which I thought was a bit young for an R rated film like Expendables.  We chatted with the woman a bit and she described her daughter as a “mature” 10, whatever that means.  We continued talking with them for a bit as we waited for the theater to go dark.  Then “it” happened.

We heard the sound of childrens voices, VERY young childrens voices.  All four of us looked in horror as two adults came up the steps with no less than 6 children.  These kids made the 10 year old next to me look like a college student.  None of them could have been older than 6.

We were shocked.  At first we assumed they had to walk into the wrong theater.  Who would be ignorant enough to take a group of small children into such a movie?  Well we got our answer, these people.  It was just beyond the scope of my imagination.

So the movie starts and these kids are carrying on the entire time as little kids do.  While the screen is filled with exploding heads, T&A and language that would make a sailor blush, these adults sat there with these kids like it was no big deal.  Luckily for the most part the action of the movie drowned out the little munchkins noise but there were several times their incessant chatter was very annoying.  They got “shushed” repeatedly with little change in their actions.  Ironically the woman next to us with the 10 year old was probably the most annoyed of all.

Well luckily, although the kids were a distraction, we still got to enjoy the movie.  It was awesome seeing all of these guys that normally carry a movie themselves work together. It was a throwback action film and both Randall and I liked it a lot, I’d give it an A.  No it isn’t going to make you a deep thinker but it surely will entertain you for around two hours.  It’s hard to believe Stallone is in his early 60’s.  He is still ripped to shreds, a tribute to the power of HGH.

When Randall and I got home we started in on a series of Wii battles.  We played tennis, bowling, baseball and ping pong among others.  For the most part I came out on the losing end of the games but all of them were closely contested.  Ali shot some Iphone video of the contests once she got back from the party.  There is some funny footage in there.  You can see the clips here, here, here and here.

Sunday morning Randall agreed to do a brick with Ali and I.  We decided to once again head to the water park and use that as our training grounds.  We did the bike portion first.  Ali decided to use her clips this time for the ride.  She had a funny (since she wasn’t hurt) fall while she was clipped in.  It was funny because she was standing still.  She had one foot clipped in and one not.  Somehow her balance tipped towards the clipped in foot and she went right over.

Ali said she was fine if Randall and I rode ahead.  We had a tail wind for the first leg of the ride and it translated into some very fast pacing, at least for me.  For the most part the first 5 miles was done in a 22 mph+ pace.   The ride back into the wind was slower but still 18-19 which isn’t bad.

Randall had me drafting him for a good portion of the ride.  Basically you try to keep within a couple feet of the rider in front of you.  Doing so allows you to miss the majority of the headwind that slows you down  and maintain the same speed as the guy in front while spending much less energy. It was best to have him lead since he is a much more accomplished biker than I am. After we got back to the park I circled back to meet up with Ali to make sure she was doing ok which she was.

Next up was the run.  Ali and Randall ran together.  They were only going to do about a mile run since Ali had just run the day before and Randall hates to run anyway.  I elected to do the full 5K once again.  I was not thrilled with my decision once I was out on the course.

I pushed myself much harder during the bike this week as opposed to the week prior when I was riding with Ali.  The extra energy expenditure on the bike made the run more difficult.  The intense sun and high humidity didn’t help much either.  I managed to grind out the 5K in under 29 minutes, not a great time for me but not horrible considering the circumstances.

Ali and I decided to buy a year long family pass to the water park instead of paying $10 a head each time we go.  This was the third week in a row we went.  Randall was smuggled in as one of our “kids’ unbeknown to management.  We hit the lap pool.

I did 800 meters total.  I timed my first 400 meters and it clicked in right around 10 minutes.  Now I am sure open water and a bunch of bodies will slow that time down a bit in the actual tri.  Randall did some swimming too but it was pretty ugly.  I got tired just watching him try to swim.

After swimming all three of us were pretty exhausted.  We spent two or three hours just chilling at the park.. We spent a good chunk of it just floating around the lazy river.  Randall only did a few trips down the water slides. On his last trip down he bottomed out in the splash down pool and scratched up his back pretty well.  That was enough for him.

Sunday night while Ali worked on the bills Randall and I watched Crank 2 on Netflix.  Randall said he saw the first one and liked it so we loaded up the sequel.  Ali watched the first bit of it before heading off to do the bills.  Luckily she left the room before the scene where Jason Statham is humping some woman in the middle of a horse race track.  Yea, the movie was filled with over the top silliness but it made me laugh quite a bit.  I’d give it a solid B.

On Labor Day Ali elected to work while Randall and I entertained ourselves.  Randall had suggested we go on another bike ride Sunday night but I was negative about it since I was already feeling sore from the brick in the morning.  Sunday I was pretty achy but I felt good enough to ride.  I just told him I wouldn’t want to be trying to set new pace records.

We elected to do the 20 mile Dunkin Donut ride.  Even without trying to push the pace we covered the distance much faster than I ever have by myself, averaging 18-19 mph over the course of 20 miles.  We had a 10-15 minute coffee and donut break at the halfway point. Randall was nice enough to be the windbreaker for the entire ride, I stayed within close drafting distance the entire way making it easier for me to maintain pace.

After the ride we were both a sweaty mess.  We cooled off in the pool for awhile.  We actually managed to wear Sadie out as she ran endlessly around the pool encouraging us to splash her.

On Monday afternoon we watched Kick Ass. This was a dvd rental from Netflix.  I rented it after I heard Howard say how much he liked it.  I actually regretted ordering it after I heard an ad for the dvd which had nothing but swearing scenes.  I thought that if that is what they are trying to push then it may not be worth watching. I was wrong.

I expected Kick Ass to basically just be a spoof of a real super hero movie and in the beginning it was.  However as the film went on it actually turned into a somewhat compelling story with real ass kicking, real bad guys and real action.  By the end of it I was cheering on Kick Ass and Hit Girl as they annihilated the bad guys.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable movie and not the one trick pony I thought it might be.  I’d give it a solid A, no shit.  Check it out yourself and see what I mean.

Randall and I loaded up Wii Fit Plus and tried out a bunch of the balance games.  Jeremy had mentioned to me awhile ago they were very good but I never checked them out.  He was right.  Sure some of the games were silly but almost every one was fun to play.  Randall and I particularly enjoyed the snowball fight, obstacle course and juggling games.

Before Randall headed back east we watched the end of Major League and the beginning of Bull Durham.  We both had a good weekend even if we didn’t get to complete a Bar-barian forum video.

I spent most of my morning at home while the third and final company came in to give us an AC replacement estimate.  I got the name of this company from mom who had heard they do good work.  This was our first woman AC person.  At first I was skeptical if a woman would know much about AC but she quickly removed that roadblock in my mind.  Julie knew her stuff inside and out.

She went all the way through the attic and looked at EVERYTHING.  None of the other reps were as thorough as she was.  In total she spent two hours going through the house, dropping me little tidbits of info along the way.  One thing I found appealing was Haines was able to do the airflow testing required for the Florida $1500 rebate.  She was confident that after the new system was in place , along with all of the other changes she was proposing, that the house would pass.  She said if it didn’t Haines would fix whatever needed to be fixed and retest for free,  another huge bonus.

The price she quoted on the actual hardware was significantly less than my other Trane equipment quote.  However the additional work they are proposing carries a hefty price tag.  Not only do they want to replace the air registers, in total they would also be replacing/increasing 7 air ducts, the assorted distribution plenums, rebuilding the air handler platform, addressing some insulation issues and replacing the refrigerant lines from the air handler to the condenser outside.  It would almost be completely gutting what we have which I like, a lot.

I thanked Julie for her time and headed out.  When I compared the numbers, the final out of pocket cost, assuming I WOULD get the Florida rebate is nearly identical.  For the same money I could get a lot more done.

I did find out one potential con.  Haines will charge us a point and a half more if we pay for it with our American Express card, I could run it through the Visa or Mastercard at the quoted price.

I am sending the quote to the other guy that I liked to at least give him an opportunity to counter. We’ll see what happens.  I expect to have a firm decision by Monday.

This weekend we have a race to time Saturday morning.  Randall is driving over later Saturday to hang out.  I plan on taking him as my date to see The Expendables.  I am sure there will be various physical challenges taking place as well, several of which will be video taped for sure.

This made me laugh.

I forgot to mention that Slick Rick Scott won the republican primary for Florida governor. Yea the same 1.7 billion fine paying dude that spent enough cash influencing the weak minded to rebuild Haiti with cash to spare.

Well now he appears to be furthering his assault on the weakly informed, taking a book out of the McCain Campaign strategy guide.

28. If your opponent is a woman or if  a woman is large factor in the opposing party campaign, you better go grab yourself a woman too!

You see, Scott’s democratic opposition this fall is a female, Alex Sink.

Not only has Scott grabbed an attractive woman as his running mate, he grabbed an attractive, black woman.  Now to be fair, I know nothing about her except what she looks like.  I can only hope she has more intelligence than “Maverick” Sarah does.

Anyway, my point is this is an obvious attempt to further dilute the election into people making choices in their leaders primarily on gender/race and little else.  Scott obviously hopes he can steal some votes from dummies that vote for a candidate because they use the same public bathroom stalls.

This guy is just pure scuzz.  He is such a cretin that the guy that ran against him refuses to bury the hatchet and endorse Scott which is normally automatic.  He is that disgusted by the man.  We all should take pause at that and ask how such a man could even be in the position to run a state.  Welcome to American politics, pay as you go.

I left work a little early yesterday to prepare for the draft party at our house.  Ali wasn’t going to be home so I had a lot to get done.

One of the first things I did was get my various incoming connections up and running.  I also tweaked the set up a bit so the audio from the Skype connection would be be played over the surround system.

A couple owners got connected in via Skype early, one of which was the guy that is over in Barcelona.  I was glad to to see that despite an ocean being between us his connection quality seemed good.

I placed the order for 8 pizzas a little after 6 and threw the two food items I was preparing in the oven around 6:30.  The first couple guys showed around the same time for the 7 pm draft.  They brought their own beer despite my having a healthy supply of my own.

The pizza showed up about 6:50, perfect timing.  Right about 7 the rest of the owners piled in.  A bunch of them carpooled from Naples.  I saw some of them coming in with even more food which we totally didn’t need.

The first part of the draft was very hectic for me.  I was handling several technical challenges.  The one remote owner was running Skype on a Mac.  Every time he would try to make a video connection he would wind up dropping from the call.  We actually wound up just having one of the 5 remote connections using both video & audio.  The audio only connection worked out fine though for the most part.  We had one connection that had some sort of noise that sounded like a submarine.  We just had him mute his mic unless he was talking.

It was very cool using the Skype group call.  I had the webcam on one of the surround speakers pointing back at the room.  It really was almost like having those 5 guys in the room, the interaction was very real time.

It became very apparent that I went too heavy on the food.  The pizza was not being consumed at nearly the rate I expected and the beer that I bought was being mostly consumed by myself.

The draft itself went smooth after the early technical glitches got worked out.  Just like last year, my picks were very rushed and produced with little thought since I was busy most of the time tending to things.  It was actually a little more challenging this year since I had the last draft slot which means when I draft I am always drafting two players consecutively.

My team is very Eagle heavy so if the Birds are no good this year my fantasy team is going to suffer.  Here is my current roster.

So the party wrapped up somewhere around 10.  Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.  After  they left we did a food survey.  We had 5 full pizzas remaining, a pile of spanikopita (spelling), 15 mini-sandwiches and about 4 bags of chips, chex mix and other similar items.

Well Ali and I were certainly not going to waste pizza so we shoved it all in the freezer.  The sandwiches would be my lunch for a few days.  We literally have enough food to feed us for lunch and dinner for a week solid at least.

We cleaned up what we could.  I didn’t have the energy or motivation to put all the furniture back in order.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty wiped.  Between the drinking and eating too much crap food my body felt like shit.  Hopefully I can cleanse myself a bit at the gym today.

Tonight is going to suck at home.  I want to mow the grass, get the house back in order and we have 100+ registrations to put into the system for the race on Saturday. Yuck.

After work we had a meeting for one of our races in December.  I was worried that the dogs had been left alone for too long.  I left the house about 9:30 and we didn’t get back home until after 6:30. Luckily there were no accidents waiting for us.

I spent the majority of what was left of the night getting the house ready for the fantasy football draft party tonight. I made a number of improvements from last year even though last year’s draft was generally viewed as the best ever.

I drug furniture around so the normal great room furniture was now pushed against the perimeter. This gave me additional floor space to pull the dining room table in.  Last year I only had the smaller fold up table in the room.  As a result a lot of people wound up having to juggle papers in their lap.  The additional big table will give owners a better surface to work off of.

The food spread last year was extensive, the problem was I had to try to prepare it all. This year I have a couple things to throw in the oven but I plan to just order 8 pizzas and have that be the main source of nourishment.

I am also upgrading the tech at this year’s draft.  Last year I had a live windows media feed stream that allowed remote owners to see and hear what was going on.  The remote owners used AIM to communicate with us.  I had their conversations displaying on the 73 inch tv.

This year I will still have the video stream and AIM available but we are hoping to use a Skype group video call primarily.  If it works out it could be very cool.  We will have one owner participating in the draft from the other side of the world, Barcelona to be exact.

My ass will be dragging tomorrow for sure.

Anyone that reads my stuff knows that I generally look upon lemming movements with disdain.  For those of you that may not know, a lemming is an animal made famous by their migrations that take them over a cliff to their death.  The lemming doesn’t think, instead he just follows all the other lemmings over the cliff.

An Iphone is a lemming phone, no doubt about it.  Everyone has heard of them and tons of people have them because they are “cool”.  There are lots of other phones out there that have better technical specs, run on faster networks and offer similar operating systems yet the Iphone rules all.

I don’t really like being an Iphone lemming but I have to admit I love mine. I like it so much that I upgraded my 3G to an Iphone 4 yesterday.

I skipped the gym yesterday to head to the Apple store.  My co-worker told me he upgraded his over the weekend there and they had some in stock.  I figured on a Monday over lunch it wouldn’t be very busy, I was wrong.  They had at least a dozen people working the floor and they were all with customers.  It made me feel even more like a lemming.

All of the Apple store employees seemed hip and with it as you would expect.  All of them except the one that eventually helped me, a woman that had to be at least 70 years old.  It struck me as very odd to see someone that old working in an Apple store.  Well as long as she could help me I didn’t really care.

There was no consultation needed.  I told her exactly what I wanted, the 32GB model and I was upgrading my current Iphone 3GS.  She went in the back and brought one out.  The entire checkout was handled on a modified Iphone Touch, it was pretty cool, you never go to a register.  Even with an old lady at the controls the upgrade process went very smoothly.  In the span of 10 minutes I was upgraded and out the door.

The first thing I did was call Ali on the new phone.  The second thing I did was try out the new camera which is a huge upgrade from the 3G version.  The higher resolution, video capacity and front/back lenses are all great.  I was equally pleased how easy it was to migrate across everything from my old phone.  I got everything moved across intact including my two Exchange push email accounts. All my apps, pictures, and text messages all moved across cleanly.

I messed around with the various features yesterday.  The better screen quality is noticeable, everything looks very clean.  The faster processing speed is also very apparent.  The response I got from the phone was much quicker than what I had become accustomed to on the 3G.

I downloaded the Netflix app and loaded up some King Corn to test it out.  Within a few seconds it was streaming beautifully. I also grabbed some additional apps to play with.  I spent the $5 for Imovie that allows you to do editing of video on your phone.  I messed with it a bit yesterday, it wasn’t exactly easy to do.

I grabbed this simple, stupid but fun and addicting game called Angry Birds.  Download it and you will see what I mean.  I also grabbed Call of Duty Zombie Wars.  This is a FPS for the Iphone.  It is a good demonstration of the graphic power of the device.  It also was a demonstration of why you shouldnt do a FPS on an Iphone.  I found the control system incredibly clunky and annoying.

The multitasking is very nice, finally I can stream Stern via Pocket Tunes while doing other stuff on the phone.  Some of the features like multi-tasking and voice control Ali could do on her 3GS but didn’t realize it.  She was happy to learn the new tricks.

I still qualified for the free case from Apple.  To get one you had to download a special app.  In the app you are able to pick from a wide variety of cases.  The one I picked will show up in 3 weeks or so.  Until then I will just need to be extra careful.

My old Iphone 3G although cut off from 3G still runs on wireless.  I was able to check mail and surf the web on it after the cutover.  My plan is to probably sell it on Craigs List.  It looks like I could realistically get $150-$200 for it.

This morning was my appointment with D. Wayne.  Yea I said his name was Dwayne before.  I just thought he was strange and liked to stretch his name into two syllables.  He told me his actual name is David but he goes by D. Wayne “in the business”.

You may recall that D annoyed me greatly on the phone.  He talked my ear off with information I generally didn’t care about.   I was already heavily jaded against him just by that call.  Imagine how I felt when he told me he was going to be a half hour late for our appointment.

So D pulls up and starts his inspection. D was a little guy, lucky if he hit 5’7″ in heels.  He annoyed me again when he chastised me for not having regular service done on the unit.  I told him I have done much of it myself.  He also said that my 3 month filter change schedule was too long, he said it should be changed every month.  I was like WTF, on the filter itself it says every 3 months.  D said it should be every month, especially since we have dogs. Um ok D.

D reiterated what I already knew, our original AC installers sucked ass.  They did a real half assed job.  He said that the probability of our house ever passing the air flow test was slim to none, to fix all the leaks would eat up that $1500 anyway.

It was interesting comparing how he went through the house compared to the first guy.  D basically just looked at the air handler, the plenum in the attic and the condenser outside. He didn’t make any mention of the air vents that Chris said were too restrictive nor did he suggest a second return to pump more air through the system.

As much as I didn’t like the guy, he did give me some good information.  After our first quote Ali and were thinking that going with the higher SEER unit was the best choice, even with it’s significantly higher price tag.  D showed us a chart that showed the energy savings of a 16 seer unit versus an 18 seer unit.  The 18 seer unit used around $150-$200 less electricity a year than a 16 seer model.  Well if you do the math it is easy to see that it would take 25 years to make up that initial price difference.

That changed our focus down to the 16 seer model.  This outfit pushes Amana equipment, the first estimate was for Trane equipment.  D’s sales pitch was very car sales-esque.  He said we would get a $500 discount if we decide to blow off the air flow test, another $500 no-FPL discount and ANOTHER 10% if we make the purchase during the first two weeks in September.

The Amana equipment was being sold with a full 10 year parts and labor warranty which is another nice perk instead of the extra that coverage would cost me with Trane.  When D was finished his final quote was a full $1700 lower than the 16 seer Trane quote I got (if I paid for the 10 year warranty from Trane) I thanked D. Wayne for his time and told him I was looking to get at least one more quote before making a decision.

I really didn’t expect D to come in that much lower in price.  I called up Chris, the first guy that came out and told him the numbers.  I told him the quote was on Amana hardware.  Chris said that explains a lot of the difference.  He said that Amana is not good stuff. It’s cheaply made and does not perform as well as a Trane.  He said their company does not sell Amana because of the problems.

I played devil’s advocate and countered that if the Amana is being sold with a 10 year bumper to bumper warranty how bad could it be?  Chris said that based on what he saw in his years as a field tech that Amana equipment just isn’t that good.  I had to weigh if he was giving me an honest opinion or just an excuse to make his higher quote seem more viable.

Another consideration was Chris doing additional work to increase the overall performance of the system.  In addition to the new equipment they would be replacing all of the ac vents, installing a second return,  increasing the diameter of the vent that feeds the far side of the house and replacing that secondary distribution box.

I told Chris that my preference was to go with his company but I couldn’t ignore the big difference in dollars.  He said the best he could do is knock another $350 off the price of the Trane system.  He also is going to get me a quote on some other lower cost models for comparison.

I’ll have to talk it over with Ali but I am still leaning towards going with the Trane equipment.  Our AC system is so shitty I feel like it would be money well spent to get higer grade stuff and have an installer that will do more than just swap it out and leave the other problems untouched.

My gym session today was ridiculous.  It was supposed to be a chest/back day.  I abandoned chest after an anemic performance on the bench.  I had no strength and every movement was aggravating my elbow/forearm.  My attempts at back work were equally frustrating so I just said F it and finished up with 15 minutes on the cross trainer.

The forearm stuff has been going on forever but the weakness was sort of weird.  I am not sure it is day 2 hangover from the brick on Sunday or what.  I just had no power at all.

I decided I am laying off anything at the gym that hurts altogether for awhile.  That means cutting out a lot of stuff including most barbell work, pull ups and pretty much anything that involves gripping.  Instead I will concentrate on tri-training, abs and anything else that doesn’t aggravate that area.

If prolonged rest doesn’t work I have no choice but to see a damn doctor.

We have not had any sort of break from the daily downpours out at our place.  I decided it was best to just avoid a muddy, wet, blade dulling attempt to mow the grass altogether.  My hope is to be able to mow it this week if we get a break in the wetness.

I really hate when our property gets waterlogged like this.  The one bright spot is new wildlife enters our yard when it takes on a swamp like appearance.  We had multiple egrets, ibis and even a couple ducks swimming around in the back yard.

On Saturday I once again wanted to get pretty much all house chores done so we could have a chore free Sunday.  Ali went running with her girl friends Saturday morning and then napped for almost 3 hours Saturday afternoon so it was mostly a solo project.  I didn’t really mind, what needed to be done yet was mostly things I do anyway.

Saturday evening we were invited over to the new neighbors house for a birthday party for Neal.  We met some of their other friends which was cool. Ali and I both had a good time.

Sunday morning Ali and I decided to do a joint training brick.  We would put our bikes in the truck and drive down to the water park.  The plan was to bike, run and then head inside the park to swim.  On the way to the park a very bad thing happened.

We were on Immokalee Road and there wasn’t very much traffic around us.  I spotted ahead of me in the distance something moving across the road.  It didn’t take me long to determine it was a turtle.  There was only one car in front of me and nothing else really close I was planning to swing over to the side, put on my blinkers and take the turtle safely to the other side of the road.

I figured the Corolla in front of us would see the turtle as well since there was absolutely no traffic around it so it could easily change lanes and miss it.  Well Ali and I watched in horror as the Corolla brake lights did not illuminate once, it’s direction or speed did not waver one bit as it exploded the turtle in it’s tracks.  It was horrible to watch.

Well I was instantly enraged.  I immediately caught up to the car and was surprised to see 4 clean cut kids all dressed up in shirts and ties.  They were laughing and talking like they just didn’t obliterate an innocent animal a few seconds prior.  I gestured angrily at the car, letting them know that I witnessed what just went down.

The Corolla dropped speed, falling way back.  I dropped my speed as well until I was doing 5-10 mph under the speed limit so they had to get next to me.  I was so furious that I really was entertaining running their vehicle into the curb as payback for their inhumane act.  Instead as the car approached I slowly inched towards it, rolled down my window and pointed at them.

In a very angry dramatic fashion I pointed at them and then gave them an equally angry thumbs down.  The finger would not have been appropriate.  The kids were no longer laughing, no longer talking and instead just looking straight ahead. Luckily for them I was turning left and they were going straight.

Ali got the license plate of the vehicle.  She wondered if there was any sort of law against willful roadkill.  I told her I was pretty sure there wasn’t.  I did say that I may be able to find out who owns the vehicle and at the very least send them (hopefully the kids parents) an anonymous letter letting them know what went down.

To me there are two possible scenarios.  One is the driver was carrying on with the other other three guys in the car and paying absolutely zero attention to the road.  The other is the kid is a total lowlife that thought it would be fun to run over a turtle.  I guess I’ll never know. All we can hope is that karma is indeed a bitch.

Ali and I were both shaken up from the incident.  Throughout the day yesterday I kept replaying that visual in my head.  I thought to myself that it was literally a matter of a split seconds that determined that turtles fate.  If it would have been a couple seconds earlier or later I would have been able to deliver it to safety instead of witnessing the poor animal get splattered across the road.  Have I mentioned lately how much people suck?

Well I guess a tri-brick was a good way to keep our mind off the turtle massacre.  First up we did a little more than a 12 mile bike ride.  Ali struggled with the ride.  She lead early on but when we couldn’t even maintain a 15 mph pace I pulled ahead.  I asked her if something was wrong.  She just was struggling pedaling against any sort of head wind.  To be fair she also had run 6 miles the day before.

Once we got back to the parking lot we had her try out her new bike shoes with clips. A couple years ago Ali tried riding a bike with clips and promptly fell over while clipped in.  That incident has scared her from trying bike shoes/clips since.

Well I gave her a brief lesson based on my bike clip experience. I held the bike upright so she could practice getting snapped in and out of the clips.  After that we launched her out the parking lot so he she could get the hang of it.  She did a good job and was able to snap herself in and out without falling.  Ali also said she could immediately feel the difference being able to fully engage her legs.  Hopefully she continues to get more comfortable with the clips.  I think it will make a big difference in her bike performance.

So next up was a run.  We ran around the park.  By that time it was VERY warm.  I told Ali I have not run outside in MONTHS.  All of my running has been of the treadmill variety.  I felt fine however.  Ali peeled off at the 2 mile mark.  I wanted to do a full 5k so I did another half lap around the park and finished just under 30 minutes.

Next we gathered up our stuff and headed inside to swim laps.  Originally my goal was to do 400 meters which is 8 back and forths in the 25 meter pool. The first 50-100 meters did not feel good but after that my unconventional technique kicked in that at least allowed me to continue without feeling like I was hyperventilating.

I finished the 400 a minute or so ahead of Ali.  She was timing herself.  Her time was like 11:30 so that means I did the 400 in 10 minutes and change which is good for me. I was fine with doing 400, especially after biking and running.  Well Ali said that she felt good in the pool and was going to swim some more.  She said I could just chill out, yea right.

Of course I couldn’t allow Ali to do more than I did so I took off after her.  By the time she had enough we had covered 1000 meters.  She said that she could have swam even more probably.  I told Ali that it was a good thing she was my training partner because if it was just me I would have stopped at 400.  Thanks to her I pushed myself beyond what I thought I could do.

Needless to say we were both majorly pooped after that.  We spent the next 2-3 hours hanging out at the water park.  We didn’t do much water sliding at all, just two trips down the inner tube slide and a few loops around the lazy river.  Other than that we just sat under on the big umbrellas and dozed off a bit in between eating lunch and an ice cream sandwich later. We both enjoyed just hanging out and people watching.

When we got back out to the truck I had a voice mail from a woman that saw my Craigs List ad for our eliptical machine.  It has sat in our exercise unused for years.  When I am doing at home cardio it is always on the treadmill.  I figured it would be nice to reclaim that space and get a few bucks for it as well. Well we made arrangements for her to come out and look at it shortly after we got home.

She rung the doorbell no more than 15 minutes after we got back.  She checked it out and said she liked it.  She offered me the mandatory less than asking price which I accepted.  There was one problem, transport.  When I talked to her on the phone about it I had mentioned I would be willing to take it to her place if she bought it since she lived relatively close.  Well since she pulled up in a CRV I knew there was no way she was going to be able to fit the eliptical in that.

I told her I would load it up on the truck.  The cross trainer is very big and awkward to move. It was  a chore just for me to get it out of the exercise room.  I loaded the thing into the truck and followed the woman to the condos she lived in.

When she told me she lived on the second floor I panicked until she mentioned there was an elevator.  Before we went inside she warned me that there was a a fully decorated Christmas tree in her living room.  She said her daughters dared her to leave it up all year so she has. Um, ok.

Getting the machine into her bedroom was a bitch.  I had to remove the foot pedals just to squeeze it in there, I needed every fraction of an inch.  Once it was in the bedroom she pointed to where she wanted it, beside her bed.  The bedroom was not large.  I didn’t have space to lift the trainer up on end and spin it around.  I wound up lifting the entire thing and somehow crawling over her bed at the same time to set it in place.  I certainly hope she has no plans of moving it anytime soon.  She thanked me for all the help.  I surely went far above the normal Craigs List protocol for the transaction.

On Sunday night I watched Book of Eli.  It wasn’t very good.  In a nutshell Denzel Washington plays a bad ass god warrior that drops bad guys like Rambo.  I thought the message of the movie was sort of stupid.  Killing in the name of God is what terrorists do, right?  I’d give it a C, not even worth a Netflix rental.

I plan to get an Iphone 4 over lunch today.  My review will be upcoming.

So yesterday I followed through on my intent to get multiple estimates on replacement of our home AC. I contacted another local place.  I called a couple minutes after 8 and was told some woman would call me back within a few minutes.  Instead I got called back mid-afternoon by some guy named Dwayne, which already cost them a few points before we even got started.

It only took me a few seconds to categorize Dwayne as first class blabber mouth.  All I wanted was to schedule an appointment to have someone give me an estimate.  Somehow this morphed into a 15 minute conversation where Dwayne rambled on.

Dwayne asked me if I heard their radio show.  I said no, I have heard their ads on the radio.  Evidently this place runs a half hour AC Q&A show every Saturday on a local station.  Dwayne said that people LOVE it and he strongly encouraged me to listen.  I said “cool” in a very weak attempt to display interest.

Dwayne then went into a sales pitch on the phone, basically already making excuses for their higher prices by pointing out the excellent service they offer and how they automatically cover everything they sell for 10 years parts and labor.  Of course, you pay for that additional coverage it is just included in what they quote you.

I was in two different sales positions in my illustrious adult work career.  I immediately thought to myself “this guy is a terrible salesman”  He was laying it on much too thick and trying to sell me something before he even knew what I needed.  I finally was able to steer him away from the bullshit long enough to actually get an appointment set up for Tuesday morning.  I can pretty much guarantee I wouldn’t buy from these people just based on that phone conversation, Dwayne totally turned me off.  Instead whatever quote they give will be just used as a tool to negotiate a lower price with someone else.

Last night I did my third entry for this month’s Bar-barian challenge which is max continuous push ups.  I did this attempt on my new push up handles. There were far fewer people that did the challenge on handles so I thought it would give me an opportunity to represent better.  I squeezed out 33 reps which was a decent number.  Earlier in the day Jeremy had hinted he thought he could compete with me doing push ups on handles.  I am eagerly awaiting his video response.

Later I worked on some more static holds, most notable was the frog stand. The frog stand is a balance movement that engages your muscles in a unique manner to maintain an upright position.  You basically assume the position and then hold it.  Once you can hold a frog stand for 60 seconds it is time to try an advanced frog stand where your arms are straight and your knees are not resting on your elbows.

I also utilized our bar stools for another hold.  Basically you put your hands in between your legs and press.  As you do you raise your body off the stool and at the same time you try to raise your knees as high as possible.  I had Ali try both exercises, she failed at frog stands but was able to do the other hold.

I had a funny moment when after doing a frog stand normally with my fingers pointed forward I thought it would be a challenge to try one with my hands reversed.  That was a mistake.  With no fingers to resist my forward momentum I promptly tipped over and banged my head into the floor.

Ali was excited last night to receive her Vibram Five Fingers.  Their arrival was a complete surprise to me, she didn’t even mention that she was getting them.

The theory with these things are they allow you simulate barefoot walking/running which some “experts” say is a benefit to developing the lower extremities in a way that today’s modern, ultra-cushioned, ultra supportive sneakers don’t allow.

I don’t know if they work or not, all I know is the look funny.  It makes you look like a character from the Flintstones.  Ali was walking around in them all night last night and said they were comfortable.  It will be interesting to see what her running experience in them is.  I’ll take my ultra padded, shock absorbing to the max running sneakers, thank you very much.

I spent much of last night doing more testing of the various tech I am going to be using at this year’s fantasy football draft that is going to be held at our house next Wednesday night.  You may recall last year I had a live video stream of the event and the remote owners connected in via AIM.  I had the computer with their AIM windows displaying on the 73 incher.

Well this year we are taking it a step further.  We are going to try to connect the remote owners via Skype video calls which will give us full, real time, two way interactivity.  In my research into this I discovered that the production version of Skype does not support group video calls however the 5.0 beta client does.

So last night we gave it a test.  I connected myself, Ali and one of the other guys in the league into a three way video call.  It worked great.  You can connect up to 5 people in this manner.

In addition to the Skype connection I still plan to have the video stream, AIM client and my Trendnet Webcam up and running for those that don’t have Skype access running.  My biggest concern is swallowing up the bandwidth coming into the house with all of that going on simultaneously.  It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

Yesterday my buddy Hoyt sent out several email forwards.  One in particular caught my eye, it was a long article about the evil of artificial sweeteners, specifically aspartame.   It attributes high intake of artificial sweeteners with a variety of physical ailments.  One product in particular that was mentioned by name was Diet Coke.

I drink Diet Coke.  Whenever I am going to have a soda it would be Diet Coke. I also consume various sugar free products.  I wouldn’t consider myself a heavy Diet Coke drinker.  On average I have 2-4 per week.  I know a lot of people though that drink the stuff like water.

I guess it really is common sense.  How many times in this world do you really get something for nothing? It sure sounds great to get the sweetness of sugar without the calorie hit doesn’t it?  But if the true cost of that is poisoning your body then obviously it isn’t a good trade off.  If nothing else, reading the info is going to make me reevaluate some of the decisions I make when it comes to what I am consuming.  Case in point, this morning I used real sugar packets instead of the Splenda I would typically add to my coffee.  Read the information and make your own choices.

I heard an interesting quick explanation of why a full moon affects certain people’s behavior/personalities.  Everyone knows that a full moon affects the tides in the oceans due to increased gravitational pull. Well the brain is composed of many things but most of all it is made of water.  The change in gravity can also change the composition in your brain temporarily.  The shift in water can change the way the electrical pathways in your head fire, affecting different people in different ways.

It just so happens that in my case the pathways that seem to be most affected are connected to the mood section of my brain.

This weekend will be typically busy although due to a week of heavy rain I may just say F cutting the grass and wait till the various ponds dry up so it can all be done in one session.  We are also skipping the gulf training swim tonight.  Ali has a busy day and I could do without an hour of swallowing salt water.  I’ll get my swim time in our pool this time around.

Want a brief glimpse what a 2011 Camaro convertible looks like?  Here you go!! Looks fantastic.

So I met up with a guy from the AC company we have used in the past for repairs to give me an estimate on system replacement.  When I saw the guy, Chris, I knew he looked familiar.  It turns out he used to be a repair tech and moved to sales about a year ago.  He was actually the guy that first discovered the pool of water we had sitting in the bottom of our return duct a few years ago.

I told him how we were looking at replacing the system to take advantage of the federal tax credit and the Florida EnergyStar program.  The EnergyStar program was just announced and Chris said they didn’t have all the details about it yet.  If I got both rebates I would be able to save $3000 on the installation.  If we were FPL customers we would have the possibility of collecting even more rebate money.

Chris inspected what we had.  I told him the original installers seemed to do a pretty piss poor job.  He confirmed it looked pretty shoddy and he laughed when he saw the distribution plenum in the attic tied up to the rafters with some tape.

He said our current ac equipment was a base 10 seer system.  A SEER is a measurement of efficiency of an AC system.  For comparison sake, in order to qualify for the rebates/tax credits you must install a minimum of a 16 SEER unit which is significantly more efficient.

He also said that all of the vents in the house would be replaced with a less restrictive variety to improve air flow.  I had mentioned to him how airflow to the far side of the house was very poor. Chris also suggested that we add a second return to the system.  Unfortunately the only place it could go is on our bedroom wall.

After doing his survey he sat down to work out quotes on two different options, both of which utilized Trane equipment which is some good stuff.  The first quote was for a higher end, 18.5 SEER system.  This unit has a two stage air handler and air compressor.  The advantage of this configuration is the ability to run in a low power mode.  This low power mode can normally be used to maintain temperature in the house.  The higher power mode is only used when the system detects it can’t keep up with heat or if rapid cooling is needed.

This system is expensive, normally $9200 installed. Trane happens to be running a $1000 rebate on this system currently so it would knock the price down a grand.

The other quote was for a 16.5 SEER Trane system.  This unit had a two stage air handler but a single stage compressor.  It will use more power than the 18.5 system. This unit only had a $100 rebate on it but it was much less expensive, $6800 installed.

Trane equipment is good stuff like I mentioned early.  The high end system has a two year bumper to bumper warranty that covers everything and 10 and 12 year parts warranties on everything else.  The cheaper unit has 1 year bumper to bumper and a 10 year warranty on everything else.

Trane offers an extended warranty (not the dealer) that actually seemed like a decent deal.  On the 18.5 system for $900 you can change that warranty coverage to 12 YEARS bumper to bumper.  Basically it would mean for the next dozen years if anything goes wrong with your AC, it’s covered, parts and labor.  The cheaper model allows you to get a 10 year bumper to bumper for $700.

I talked to Chris more about the Florida rebate.  One of the requirements is the air vents are tested to verify that they have no more than 15% of air flow leakage.  I KNOW our existing system leaks.  That plenum that is hanging from the rafters leaks badly.  One of the things I liked was Chris said that box would be totally replaced and the secondary distribution box on the other side of the house would be as well.  The replacement of the ceiling vents should also address another potential source of leakage.

The point of this is the Florida rebate is a bit of a crapshoot.  I would need to pay someone else to do this air flow testing and there is no guarantee that even after replacing the system that it would pass the leakage parameters.  So basically I would be rolling the dice that few hundred bucks I spend on the test would turn into a $1500 rebate if it passes.  If it doesn’t pass it’s like rolling a 7.

I thanked Chris for the information and the quote.  I told him I planned to get several estimates.  He told me that if anyone quoted lower on the same equipment that I should let him know.

To be honest, I liked Chris.  He is likable, honest and knows what he is talking about since he was in the field doing service for years.  I could have easily just given him the go ahead.  However I know that the practical thing to do is get some other companies in the mix to play them off each other.  Yea it’s a pain in the ass having to leave work to meet up with them but if it saves me a few hundred by doing so it’s worth it.