Archives 2010

Last night when I got home it was raining.  I had planned to go out and till the new soil into the garden but I certainly didn’t want to do it in the rain.  Luckily the rain stopped 15 minutes later so I decided to venture outside.

I first dumped my 9 bags of compost and garden soil around various spots in the garden.  I then snapped on my new tiller attachment to the weed whacker and got busy.  I tilled in two perpendicular directions to loosen the soil as much as possible.  I followed up with the rake to even out the furrows created by the tiller.  By the time I was done I had two nice planting areas on either side of the garden with a small path down the middle.

By the time I was done sunlight was fading but I decided I wanted to get some stuff in the ground.  I wound up planting almost everything that was edible including onions, lettuce, swiss kale, two varieties of tomatoes, and two varieties of peppers.  By the time I got done it was after 7 and almost pitch black.  Everything I planted only took up one side of the garden, I am not sure what we will plant on the other, possibly one of the fruit shrubs we got. (blueberry, black berry, raspberry)

You may recall in mid-October I changed my one Sirius subscription that was due to expire in the end of November from a yearly plan to a monthly plan.  My thought process is if Stern does not renew with Sirius I will be cancelling their service immediately so I didn’t want to be locked in for another year. The rep that handled my request said that once the year on that radio expired November 24th I would be switched over to month to month billing.

So imagine my delight when I have an envelope from Sirius in the mail yesterday.  I open it up and pull out a bill with an orange flyer that has in big letters YOUR PAYMENT IS PAST DUE IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!  I was PISSED as I glanced over a bill that showed I owed them $12 dollars and change.

I immediately got on the phone and after a typically annoying 10 minute wait got somebody. I explained that I was not supposed to see a bill until my current year subscription expired. The rep said that when I called in before they switched me immediately to monthly billing. WTF, that was not what was supposed to happen.  The rep apologized and said that she could not fix the problem, I had to be transferred to billing.  I asked her if I would have to wait another 10 minutes to talk to someone in billing because I had stuff to do.  She said no, it should be immediate.  Well after 5 minutes of dead air I hung up and resisted the urge to throw the phone against a hard surface, f’ing idiots.

So first thing today I call back Sirius.  I once again explain the situation to another customer service dude.  In addition to being annoyed about being billed before I should have been I mentioned to the guy that I saw Sirius tries to charge customers an EXTRA $2 if they want a paper invoice sent to them. That wasn’t going to fly either.

So after typing in all of my complaints I am once again told that I have to be transferred to billing.  I told the guy I was put on a dead air hold the night before.  He said he will transfer me directly.

So after a brief hold the phone is answered with an Indian accent.  I thought to myself “They didn’t just transfer to f’ing INDIA for the billing department….” Yep, they did.  I had to try to explain my problem to a robotic, hard to understand, Indian.  He basically tried to reiterate that I saw the charge because it was the result of my request to switch over to monthly billing.  I had ZERO patience at this point.  Being transferred to India to put the issue to bed enraged me.  I cut him off mid-explanation with “Please transfer me to the cancellation department”

Once again I am ported back to the United States.  Evidently if you are ready to cancel you are good enough to talk to someone that speaks English natively, if you need your bill corrected you get marble mouthed Indians.

For a third time I explained the background.  I said I wasn’t going to pay a penny before my year runs out November 24th and there was no way I was going to pay an extra $2 a month for a bill. The woman understood my frustration and did her best to accommodate me.  She waived the charges that were showing on the account and gave me 2 months of the monthly service for free so I shouldn’t see a monthly charge until December.  I gave her my CC info once again so they can bill the card directly to avoid the invoice fee with the understanding that I was not committing any more than one month at a time.

It will be interesting to see if what I was told will actually take place.  I will not be at all surprised if I have to call them ranting and raving in a few weeks.  Sirius just sucks, plain and simple.

My co-worker came across this cool Iphone app called imut8r that allows you to turn someone into a freak in a couple minutes.  I had fun Friday mutating myself, the dogs and even Ali although she won’t let me post hers. For a 99 cent app it is amazingly powerful.  There are literally thousands of monsters you can become with the many combinations available, highly recommended.

Saturday was yet another bust ass day around the homestead.  The woman that does the house cleaning was supposed to stop by in the morning to look at the house.  She got tied up and rescheduled to come by in the afternoon.

Ali did most of the tractor mowing before she had to head out to go into work for a few hours.  I got on the tractor and finished the regular mowing and then headed into the back yard to finish that as well.  I managed to get the tractor stuck four or five times during the process as I tried to mow down the ditch as much as possible.  Pulling the tractor out of the ditch with nothing more than my two hands wasn’t much fun since my back was very sore from Friday’s 300.

Later in the afternoon the kids next door came over to play with our dogs and then head into our pool for a bit.  The girl actually tried to put a bathing suit on Sadie which didn’t stay on very long.  Sadie loved having two kids in the pool with endless energy.  She chased them around the edge for a solid half hour.

The cleaning lady pulled up mid afternoon to survey the house.  She was obviously spooked by the dogs although I assured her they were harmless.  I took them both outside where they barked the entire time.  The dogs will add a layer of complication to the process.  Instead of being able to have the woman and her crew come and go as they please we will need to make sure Ali is around to corral and control the dogs, otherwise Nicki would be barking constantly and Sadie would be up in their face.

Vanessa asked me how often I was thinking I would use her.  I initially said maybe every 6 weeks or so.  She said that with the dogs she would recommend doing it once a month.  My 6 week idea came from the schedule my buddy uses with her.  However he is a minimalist with no pets and zero clutter.  His house basically looks like a model home.

On the positive side she said we didn’t have much tile which cuts down on the scrubbing they have to do.  On the negative side we have a lot of “stuff’ sitting around which adds to the cleaning time.  What they do is an initial deep cleaning where they clean just about everything you can imagine from floor to ceiling.  This deep cleaning costs around double what a normal cleaning does because it is so extensive.

I liked what I heard.  The idea of having the house professionally cleaned on a regular basis is appealing.  If after having it done a few times I decide it isn’t worth it I can always stop the service.  Ali of course is all for it, she loves the idea of doing less cleaning.  Ali is too busy this week so our first deep cleaning probably won’t occur until next week sometime.

Another one of my Saturday projects was sign creation.  I wanted to make two signs, one for a big community yard sale we are planning for mid-November and another one for the neighborhood email list.  I used plywood left over from the hurricane shutter project.  I painted the signs pure white to provide the best contrast with black letters.  I finished up the email list sign, complete with mounting it towards the end of the road. The yard sale sign hopefully will be wrapped up after work during the week.

I had a surprise Saturday afternoon when I saw a 7 foot long narrow box show up by my front door.  It was my new HDTV antenna.  I popped the box open just so I could grab the instructions to look them over. Of course you need a pole to mount an antenna to.

Later in the weekend I went to Home Depot, Lowes and even Best Buy looking for an antenna mast.  I struck out at all three places.  I found this very odd.  OTA antennas are pretty popular nowadays due to the outrageous cost of cable, I didn’t anticipate not being able to find a pole to mount one on.  I had to once again turn to the internet and grabbed 15 feet of antenna mast and some mounting hardware off Amazon.

Sunday morning Ali and I had to pry ourselves out of bed to time another race.  This race is unique,  it encourages runners to come in costume since it always is held right around Halloween.  Ali and I got into the spirit ourselves and dressed up for the race.

Ali also planned to run in the race so her costume had to be tolerated for 5 miles of running as well.  She went with an old cheerleader costume we had in the Halloween bin.  It looked cute on her.  I went with the venerable Jason mask teamed up with my throwback Randall Cunningham jersey and bucket hat.

Timing of the race went fine although we had some problems due to it being a run/walk event.  We had some people that were walkers that mistakenly were put into the running division which skewered the results until we discovered it.

Ali had a tremendous race, crossing the finish in less than 45 minutes which translated into a speedy 9 minute mile pace. On top of that her and the girls went back out to do another 5 miles as part of their half marathon training regimen.

Ali and I drove separately to the race because she once again had to run into work for a bit.  I went home and unloaded the truck as well as performing the post race duties.  By the time Ali got back I was just about finished up.

She was totally exhausted and even though we planned to go to the water park, she asked if she could lay down for a bit to take a nap.  I didn’t mind, it gave me a chance to shoot my last Bar-barian challenge videos for October.

I had made one attempt earlier in the month at the challenge which was max continuous push ups and got 42 reps.  I figured since it was Halloween I would dress up for this last attempt.  I dug out my Spartan costume, complete with sword and shield and headed out to the dog deck.  I managed to get three more reps this time which I was pleased with, for a total of 45.

There was a side contest as well where you do diamond push ups instead of the regular variety.  Diamond push ups are harder, you bring your hands together so that the space between them more or less forms a diamond.  They emphasize the triceps more than the chest.  I switched into my Jason mask for the second set.  Going to failure just a few minutes prior definitely affected my diamond push up number but I still managed to do 34 of them which was decent for me.

By the time I got done processing the video Ali was ready to head to the water park.  This was the last day the water park was open until Christmas break.  I have come to really enjoy spending part of my Sundays there and was a bit sad that it was coming to an end.

The place was very empty, even with temps in the upper 80’s.  I wanted to do another 1600 swim session.  Ali was still feeling wiped out from her run so she decided to just work on her tan instead.  I stopped briefly after the first 800 to spit in my googles, they were fogged up badly and it was annoying me.  After less than a minute break I was back at it. I did each 800 meters in 17:30 or less which was a good time for me. After my swim we just hung out for awhile.  We didn’t hit any of the water attractions, both of us felt glad to just unwind for a bit.

After the water park we hit Lowes.  Like I mentioned, the primary intention was to grab an antenna mast which I struck out at.  However we also grabbed materials to start our winter garden.  We grabbed a variety of vegetables, some compost to amend the soil and a couple dirt cheap clearance plants, some of which were as cheap as a dime, yes, a dime.

When we got back home it was late in the day.  I just dumped the stuff in the garden for the time being.  Getting the garden ready will be another to do list for the week.

Our Sunday night was busy as well.  Ali made a huge salad that we will be able to consume during the week.  We also did the bills, dishes, and laundry right up until bedtime.  The weekend flew by.

Ali and I were mapping out the weekends for the next 2-3 months.  It seems like almost every single weekend has something going on until late January.  Next week we continue the string with a sprint triathlon in Boca Grande.  Let the fun begin.

Once again I am having the rug pulled out from under me.  Yesterday SyFy announced they are canceling Caprica after only one season.  Much like what happened to me with Sarah Connor Chronicles and to a lesser degree Heroes (I was kind of ready for Heroes to die), Caprica is being sent to the scrap heap much too soon.

I found the show fascinating, especially after digesting the entire BSG series previously.  I am surprised that all of the BSG fans didn’t help prop this show up.  I can only imagine there wasn’t enough explosions or hot chicks this time around to satisfy as many space geeks.

There are 5 episodes left.  I am curious if there is going to be any attempt to wrap up the story lines or if they will just leave it hanging there like a dismembered limb.    To make it worse they are making us wait for the last 5 episodes until some time in 2011. F’in jerks.

SyFy tried to soften the cancellation by announcing a NEW BSG spinoff called Chrome and Blood which is supposed to take place 10 years into the Cylon war.  I am sure I’ll be watching that one as well.  I am getting tired of investing into shows that get eviscerated.

Today I did my first 300 since April.  It wasn’t the same sort of 300 that I did for more than two years straight.  I call it version 2.0.

In an old school 300 you do each exercise until the total reps for that exercise are complete.  Today I broke it into a 3 set circuit where I did mostly 20 rep sets.  I plan to mix up the exercises I am doing from week to week as well.  Variety is always a good thing when it comes to exercise.

Today I mixed in some old school 300 movements like dead lifts, box jumps and one handed clean & presses with some other things like diamond push ups, body weight dips and burpees.

In 2.0 I also am paying much more attention to form then in the past where partial ROM push ups, pull ups and box jumps were the norm.  Using full range of motion makes each exercise more difficult but more beneficial as well.  I also am doing more total reps of each exercise than an old 300 where the most you did of anything was 50 reps.  Today almost everything was 60 reps.

At the end of the session I needed 10 reps to get to 300.  I decided to try some jumping burpees.  Wow, I couldn’t believe how much I struggled just to get 10 of them done.  I had to take a break at eight because I was panting so hard before I squeaked out the last two.

I was just as sweaty and just as exhausted as my 300 glory days so that made me feel good.  Being able to sprinkle in 300’s on top of triathlon training will be a pretty sweet thing.

This weekend we have a race to time Sunday.  We also plan to hit the water park Sunday since it is the last day it is open until Christmas Break for the schools.

I also have a cleaning woman stopping by the house to take a look tomorrow.  My boss and my buddy both use this woman’s service and they said she does fantastic work for really reasonable money.  They do complete ceiling to floor cleaning.  I am thinking about having them come in maybe every month and a half or so to compliment what we do, which is nowhere near as detailed.

While I was putting in my mileage on the treadmill yesterday I saw a commercial for what may be the silliest, yet most sexually suggestive exercise device yet, the Shake Weight.

The Shake Weight is an elongated dumbbell with each weighted end connected via a spring like device.  The pitch is by moving the weight back and forth rapidly in short movements you develop muscle tone from resisting the inertia.

The reality is you look like you are practicing your two handed phallus technique.  You have to see this thing in action to believe it. Here, take a look.

Anyway, even though I was at the top end of my aerobic capabilities, I laughed out loud when I saw the commercial.  I really need to meet a real life Shake Weight customer.

When I am on the treadmill I typically have ESPN on.  The hosts over the lunch hour include Chris McKendry.  I don’t understand why they have this woman on Sports Center, the holy grail of male tv watching.  You would think any woman that was a host on ESPN would be steaming hot since that is what men appreciate. Well Chris McKendry  is looking pretty ragged nowadays.  I am thinking her days in front of the camera may be winding down.

Read the quote below on some guy’s website – I couldn’t agree with him more.

Have you ever heard of people that treat symptoms instead of problems?  Doctors and especially pharmaceutical companies LOVE these type of individuals, hell they try to breed them.  The game works like this.  People willingly abuse their bodies via smoking, overeating or lack of exercise (or any combination) and as a result they develop health conditions.  The pharmaceutical companies then will happily swoop in and give you a miracle pill to treat the symptoms of your ailment.  In their ideal world people will simple continue to abuse their bodies so they continue to suffer the symptoms so they can profit as a end result.

To me, it’s pure insanity for someone to rely on a plethora of pills to maintain their day to day existence when they could simply work on the real source of the problem and address it directly.  I mean really, wtf?  If you kept hitting your hand with a hammer every day would you continue the behavior and just keep taking pain pills for the pain or would you stop swinging the hammer? (or at least get some better aim)

Of course as much is in life, it comes down to convenience/laziness.  It is far easier in many peoples minds to just take some pills than to change a lifestyle that they deem comfortable.

It’s a dreadful cycle that has been exploding over recent years.  Self responsibility becomes trivialized when you can rely on modern medicine to keep you alive despite your best efforts to the contrary.

I have been asleep in bed at 9pm Monday night and 9:30 last night.

Yesterday my anti-Comcast post was immediately gobbled up by their blog patrol.  It seems that Comcast has staff dedicated to nothing but addressing negative comments about the company that proliferate the web.

Mark from Comcast added this:

I got a few questions about the details of swapping  out my Comcast cable for HD pulled in via an HD antenna.  In my situation it will be really very easy.

When we had our house built there was no cable available in the area, I actually used an antenna to pull in the local networks.  In addition, when we pulled coax for the various rooms we pulled two runs for each, meaning I already have a second set of coax I can use for the antenna signal to be routed through out the house.

In a normal situation you would just connect the coax from the antenna to the feed where your cable used to be connected.  I also have a powered amp if need be to make sure I have strong signal.  It is currently being used to boost the weak Comcast signal levels that cause my HD picture pixelate on a regular basis without amplification.

Physically mounting the antenna will involve attaching a 20 foot pole to the side of the house, mounting the antenna and grounding it.  I’ll be sure to document the install process.

The antenna cost $130 with free shipping from Amazon.  It should show up next week. You can get the more compact HD antennas for $50 or less.

Yesterday I took the first step toward ridding myself of that plague known as Comcast, I ordered an HD antenna.  I went big, choosing to get a big antenna with long range instead of some of the more compact but shorter range models since I am 35 miles away from the towers.

Since the weekend I have been on the warpath with companies that I give money to that I really don’t want to.  Comcast is number one on my hit list.  I am disgusted with what we are charged for internet and basic digital cable with HD service, $140+ a month.

I did a little research and found that OTA HD signals are actually the best quality HD you can get, better than cable or satellite.  After looking at my season pass list on the main Tivo I saw that almost everything is on the major networks, all of which I can grab off an antenna.  So the plan is to drop Comcast for cable tv and get our feed for free, over the airways.

Next up is addressing internet access.  Sure you can use Comcast just for internet access but if you DON’T use them for tv as well they charge you an extra $10, f that.   So part two of my plan is to grab 10 megabit Century Link DSL so I can completely eliminate Comcast from my life.  I can get the high speed DSL service for $40 a month.

That brings us to Vonage.  Ali and I discussed the need to even have a land line anymore, even the VOIP variety as Vonage.  Originally we needed a land line for both our security system and DirecTV.  It is no longer needed for either.  Our land line is mostly used by telemarketers and incessant political robocalls more than anyone else.

We have the option to include land line service with Century Link for an extra $15 a month (plus taxes, fees)  I also have set up a Google Voice account which will allow calls to a central number to ring on both of our cell phones although that would involve letting everyone know the new number since you can’t port numbers to Google voice, YET.  The third option is just say to hell with land line and just exclusively use our cell phones.

Personally I am leaning towards just using Google Voice.  Zero cost with the features Vonage charges us for.

The trimming was not yet complete.  Yesterday I cancelled one of my two WoW accounts.  With the expansion due out in December I will have plenty to keep me busy using just one account.  If I ever need to get to the second account I can reactivate it but until then it saves us another $13-$14 a month.

There are other cost saving possibilities out there.  As I mentioned last week, if Stern doesn’t resign with Sirius I am dumping them like a hot potato which would save another $25-$30 a month.

Once the HD antenna is in place I may decide to retire the Tivo in the bedroom, saving me another $10 or so in monthly subscription charges.  I figure if I go the playon route I can watch most of my non-network shows on demand anyway via the Iphone or Ipad.

If it all pans out it could add up to a lot of savings monthly, maybe $200 or more.  That $200 plus what we currently allocate to the Camry payment should allow me to absorb a Camaro payment with minimal impact to the bottom line.  You see, there is always a method to my madness.

So Saturday morning I was timing my first every regional cross country meet.  I put a lot of effort in ahead of time preparing for this task.  I had a couple phone conversations with the author of the timing software I use to make sure I was doing everything correctly.  Instead of spending hours entering paper entries I spent the time doing test sessions and importing spreadsheets from each school that had their roster.

One important detail I forgot to address was exactly how to get the location of the event which being held at one of the area high schools.  I turned down the street that had a sign for the school but I ran into a locked gate.  I could see the football stadium all lit up inside the fence (where I needed to go) but I had no idea of how to get there.

Along the fence line there was a narrow dirt path that ran parallel to the field.  I thought maybe if I followed it I would eventually come to an opening where I could cut across.  Well after about a half mile on this path it dead ended to another locked gate.  The path was too narrow to turn around on since there was a canal on the other side of it so I had to drive backwards out of there.

Of course I was getting rather annoyed as I tried to use my GPS to guide me into the facility.  Luckily I just stumbled into another entrance after circling around for a little while.  I found the race organizer and finally was able to pull my truck into the football stadium.

The Collier County school system has VERY impressive athletic facilities.  They just got done replacing all of the high school football fields with RealTurf, the fake grass that is actaully better than grass in many ways and light years ahead of good old astroturf.

I was impressed on how much bounce the field had.  The “grass” itself looked pretty real as well.  One of the things that helps RealTurf feel like it does are the millions of tiny little rubber balls that are buried in the grass.  They both provide cushion and prevent cleats from getting stuck in the turf which causes many injuries.  I also noticed that if you walk on this turf for a period of time you will surely have a bunch of these little rubber balls inside your sneakers. It felt pretty cool to be down on that beautiful field that was lit up from the stadium lights which were all burning brightly.

It was time for me to set up.  Because in this event all of the data entry was handled ahead of time it made for a pretty leisurely environment leading up to the race.  After getting the laptop and timing equipment set up I had a lot of stand around time until the first race started at 8:00 am.

The first race was the varsity girls.  As the first finisher crossed the line I panicked a bit when I saw her time was two minutes longer than it should have been, I made a typo in the race start time.  Luckily I was able to correct it easily.  By the time the last girl crossed the line I already had the results of the first race complete.  The coaches were thrilled with instant results.  In the past they timed the race by hand which takes MUCH longer and produces much less information.

In total there were four races that went down one after the other and the timing went great.  I had one girl that said her chip didn’t register (although it tested fine later) and one girl we had to DQ because she accidentally cut the course short.  Other than that, things were perfect.

I have a feeling that my chip timing the race could possibly lead to more timing work for other cross country meets as word spreads of how efficient it was.  I had a couple coaches on site ask me about the possibility of timing stuff for them.  I told them I would be happy to talk to them about it, hell I could use Camaro money.

I actually did pretty much every part of timing the race myself, I didn’t have to hardly involve Alison at all.  She showed up on site after a group run and handled getting all of the chips sorted and put away which was a nice help.  Other than that it was a one man show.

I can’t tell you how many times I was thanked and told how much my efforts were appreciated at the race.  It made me feel good about what I do.

Once we got home and after I had the results posted and equipment put away I immediately moved into my other work.  Alison was pooped from getting up early and running so she retired for her customary nap.  By the time she came outside I was finishing up the last of three things I wanted to get done, back filling the sprinkler repair area, spreading weed n feed over the rest of the yard and replacing another ripped section of screen in the pool cage.

Once I was done there I decided to hop on the mower and mow down the majority of the back yard which was overgrown badly.  I had worked on the tractor the week before trying to fix an annoying oil leak that would cause the mower to smoke like mad when it first heats up from oil on the exhaust manifold.  It seems like my repair was successful, I had no oily smoke during the session.

Alison went out for a girls night out Saturday night with Christie and Michelle.  She said they hit a number of places before she rolled back home after midnight. I spent my night working on the computer and watching the Phillies get eliminated from the playoffs.

Sunday morning we just did a swimming workout at the water park.  I told Ali I almost felt lazy by doing JUST swimming and not tying running, biking or both into it.  My goal this time was to swim another 1600 meters/yards (not sure of exact length) however this time I wanted to do it continuously.

I have traversed this distance in the water twice before but the first time it was four 400 meter segments and then two 800 meter segments.  This would be the full Olympic swimming distance at once.

Before I started I had Ali shoot video of me doing my warm up lap with the Flip HD I grabbed off of Woot.  I have described how my swimming style is very weird and leaves much to be desired.  As you can see, there are elements of freestyle, side stroke and even a breaststroke style kick in there.  I know it looks very odd but for whatever reason it allows me to swim extended distance in a reasonable amount of time.  Why fix it if it works for me?

I was able to hit my goal, pulling down 32 fifty yard laps in about 34:30 according to my watch.  It wasn’t easy.  I tried to imagine hopping right on a bike for 25 miles and then running another 6 after such a swim.  It didn’t seem like it would be very much fun.

Boy this past weekend was a big change from the last where all of the Philly sports news was good.

The Phils had a lot of momentum returning home after a huge win in San Fransisco to extend the series.  The rabid fans were thrilled when the team jumped out to an immediate 2-0 lead. Unfortunately that was all the team scored, filling the rest of the game with frustration culminated by Ryan Howard striking out looking to end the game.  The Giants simply played better during the series.  Their pitching for the most part shut the Phils down, plain and simple.  Oh well there is always next year.

The Eagles game was very aggravating as well.  For half of the game the Birds were handling the Titans pretty easily.  They were driving for a TD that would have given the Eagles a huge lead when LeSean McCoy fumbled the ball away after a sloppy exchange.  Then the wheels came off.

The Titans have this receiver I never heard of with the last name of Britt.  All of a sudden he become God-like.  He burned the Eagles again and again AND AGAIN for huge gains down the field.  It was utterly insane.  Sean McDermott had absolutely no answers for this kid.  Instead of moving Asante Samuels onto Britt he left Ellis Hobbs on him who got burned worse than toast in a flamethrower.  Hobbs looked like he was playing on one leg, he apparently sucks.

Well McDermott had no plan to slow down Britt who had 225 yards and 3 TD”s receiving. As a result the Eagles went down in flames after controlling the game for more than a half.  It was very disappointing.

I have continued my investigation into ways I can cut down on paying too much money for stuff that I shouldn’t be, my latest target being the ridiculous amount of money Comcast charges us for cable tv.

One of the options is to use a HDTV antenna to grab over the air high def broadcasts of the major networks.  I have read that surprisingly, the best HD picture you will get is via this route.  The vast majority of what is sitting on our Tivo is major network programming AND the Tivo’s have support for an antenna based connection, another plus. I also have my Netflix service which is an unlimited source of tv content.

If there is a downside it would be the absence of some cable only programming I like such as Caprica, The Ultimate Fighter, Iron Chef and a few more.  Well I may have found an answer for that as well.

A Google search turned up a website called http://playon.tv  It is an application that you install on your Windows based pc that allows it to act as a proxy for other DLNA/uPnP devices to grab web based video content.  It supports a number of devices including all the popular console gaming systems, iphone/ipad and many more.

I tested the system out on my Wii as well as my Iphone and Ali’s IPad.  It’s pretty damn slick.  The interface is barebones but simple to use.  The selection of available content is pretty staggering including Hulu, Spike.tv, ESPN and many, many more.  The content took less than a minute to finish buffering before it fired up.

There are a few drawbacks.  To use the service obviously your Windows pc has to be up and running to serve up the content.  The client itself seems to be a large resource hog as my CPU meter was running at over 50% even when it wasn’t actively streaming.  Once streaming started it almost pegged the CPU.

The quality of the video stream varies from provider to provider.  On the small Iphone and Ipad screen the video content looked just fine across the board.  However when you blow that up to 73 inches there is a pretty big visual quality hit.

Playon is not a free service.  You can try it for two weeks for free.  After that you can pay $40 and then $20 a year or bite the bullet and pay $80 to be good to go permanently.  A one time $80 cost versus $700-$800 in cable tv charges a year is a good trade in anyone’s book.  It’s all a matter if you are ok with some of the other trade off’s.

Today at the gym I did a workout that was along the lines of the venerable 300 but a bit different.  In total I did 271 reps that were broken down like this (totals)

41 pull ups

60 body weight dips

60 box jumps

60 diamond push ups

50 clean & press with 35 pound dumbbell

Now when I was in my 300 hey day I wasn’t very open to criticism about the form I used to complete the reps.  Jeremy in particular used to dog me about it.  I never was very willing to listen to his thoughts on form since he only dabbles in strenuous exercise a few times a year.

However once I started participating in the Bar-barian forums I saw more emphasis on form versus numbers so it started to sink in. These were guys that actually walked the talk.

If you compared the form in today’s 271 versus a typical 300 three years ago there would be a big difference.  The 41 pull ups today were full range of motion starting with my arms fully extended and ending when my chin was at bar height.   They used to be about half as long where I did more of a hanging bounce and less of a pull.

The push ups also used to be short on range where I bounced rapidly in the lower half of the motion but didn’t lock out the reps.  The diamond push ups today were full ROM and are much more difficult than conventional push ups.

Even my clean and presses and box jumps were sloppy before.  The C&P’s didn’t have full extension at the top (they did today) and my box jumps used to not include straightening my legs on top of the box.  Not only was every rep today with full extension I did it with 11 steps per side instead of the 8 I used during my 300 work outs.

It felt good to be able to do a work out with some high intensity while maintaining solid form.  I am hoping it is the start to a period of three months where my fitness level slowly ramps up until it is fully utilized for the Pull Up Challenge at the end of January.

I just read that by 2050 if nothing changes 1-3 Americans could be diabetics.  Hell I am surprised they are projecting it could take that long.  Just walk down any street in America and you see diabetes candidates left and right.  With as fat as America is, it’s odd that there would be opposition to a better national health care plan, we certainly are going to need it.

The health care plan we utilize at work is the way I think all health care should be.  There are three levels of coverage.  If you are a lazy lard ass and don’t put any effort or take any responsibility for your personal well being you get thrown on the basic coverage plan.  You pay the most for your coverage and also have the highest deductible.

The middle plan requires you to at least get a blood test so you are aware of potential problems.  You are also required to fill out a health questionnaire.  By doing this you get lower deductibles and pay less than the person that does nothing.

If you want the lowest cost, lowest deductible coverage you have a few more hoops to jump through.  You must undergo regular physicals and if your numbers show you are diabetic or pre-diabetic or if you smoke, you must attend classes that are designed both make you aware of the dangers of your issues and help you address them.

Hell this year they went a step further.  If your spouse is on the plan they have to jump through those same hoops to qualify for the same coverage.  Sure, it is an inconvenience to a degree but I don’t have a problem with it when I consider what it does in the big picture. It rewards those that work at maintaining their health and penalizes those that don’t.  More things should be like modeled  this way including a national health care plan.

Speaking of that plan I saw more political attack ads running that mentioned the health care plan.  One of the negatives was the atrocity of being REQUIRED to have health insurance.  How outrageous, right?  How is this any different than states that REQUIRE people to have automobile insurance?  The logic is the same.

If somebody hits you and they don’t have insurance this can negatively impact you because the may not have the money to cover damage/injuries to you.  If somebody doesn’t have health insurance and incurs massive medical expenses, all of that money gets absorbed by the people that DO have insurance, resulting in higher premiums for the rest. If everyone has insurance, everyone pays their fair share.

It’s the same principal, duh.

I spent the majority of last evening doing more prep work for this cross country race I am timing Saturday.  I set up the timing system and did some test runs to make sure I understood exactly how I was going to handle timing the meet.  In addition to the testing, Ali and I had to make packets for each team that had the chips for their kids.  I have spent TONS of time preparing for this race.  If I would time more of these meets in the future I would ask for more cash to do it, it’s a lot of work.

As I plodded away we also were watching the Phillies game.  It was a win or go home game for the Phils.  I thought the Phillies should be in good hands with Halladay on the mound but right off the bat things didn’t go well with the Giants scoring early.

Unlike his no hitter performance where Halladay seemed as cool as the North Pole, he seemed visibly bothered last night.  I think it was a combination of things including the annoying, loud Giants fans, having the strike zone squeezed by the ump and the general pressure of being a must win game.  It seemed like all night long he was going 3-2 on the hitters.

Even with his struggles Halladay still only gave up two runs.  I have to be honest though I thought the Phillies were destined to lose the game, especially when they hit into a line drive double play with runners on 1st and 3rd, blowing a great scoring opportunity.    It seemed like the Phillies just were not getting the lucky breaks you needed to win games in the playoffs. (although the 3 runs they got in the 4th or 5th were aided by Giant errors)

However unlike the night before where the relievers fell apart, this time they did a bang up job, managing to keep the Giants at bay culminated by Lidge shutting the door in the 9th. Now the team gets to bring the series back to Philadelphia.  I am looking forward to the Phillie fans ripping the Giants apart.

This weekend on top of timing the meet I have a bunch of things to do around the house, surprise surprise.  The top three items are back filling the area where I did the sprinkler repair, repairing another section of ripped screen on the lanai and spreading weed and feed on a few more sections of the yard.  If I get bored after that I have all of the palm trees to get trimmed before the holidays and the sheds both could use some pressure washing.  Of course I will be watching Phillies baseball and Eagles football.  We also hope to shoot over to the water park to do some sort of brick Sunday morning.