Archives May 2011

I met up with Ali last night to do a run.  We went over to the land of the old pervs, Sugden Park. You see, the park has been in the news a few times in the last couple months as a location for a police sting operation.  Evidently it is/was a popular spot for men, especially old men trolling for casual gay sex.  The park must still be under surveillance as the police had their eye in the sky cherry picker set up in the parking lot as a visual deterrent.

We ran 3 miles at a 9:40 pace, faster than Ali has run in awhile.  She was really pushing to keep up towards the end but she hung in there.

Later after we had dinner we took out our bikes to the driveway.  Ali was working on some simple balance drills with her bike to help her feel more confident on it.  We also went next door to our Michigan neighbor’s driveway and practiced on it since it is a longer half loop.

I tried some of the more advanced balancing drills that Ali was shown like having both feet on one side of the bike while it is moving and then stepping over and into riding position.  I failed trying to pick up a Gatorade bottle off the ground while riding by it, it was just a little too short for me to reach. After the session Ali said she definitely felt less antsy being on the bike which is what the goal is.

I have just about hit my limit regarding the neighbor and her dog situation.  I have indicated to her it is a problem time and again and have been offered various promises of remediation, none of which have been followed through on.

She seems to fail to realize that the real problem isn’t just the annoying racket the dogs make, it is that she isn’t willing to properly housebreak the animals and as a result has thrown a breed that is absolutely not meant to be outside, outside.

For her to ignore my complaints after the tons of favors I have done for her just multiplies the resentment.  I am done with her.   Ali told me yesterday that she has also indicated her concern about the dog situation to the neighbor, probably in a nicer manner than I have yet it still has not resulted in a change in behavior.

Sometimes you just have to write off a spade as a spade and act accordingly.

Google “chihuahua kept outside” and take a look at what you find.

Here is another fitness tip, just a little too long for a tweet.

Going halfway with your fitness/weight loss program never works long term.

If you start an exercise program but don’t modify your diet along with it you could see limited changes in the mirror that may be so slow that they discourage your efforts altogether.  Also, people that exercise and then consistently REWARD themselves for the exercise with shitty food are doomed to failure. It’s like climbing a mountain of sand.

Likewise, if you go on one of these silly fad diets but don’t back it up with a solid exercise program you are doomed to reinflate the moment you stop the silly (low carb, low fat, high fat, all juice, all meat and cheese) diet.  Since you will have not accumulated any additional lean muscle mass to help burn additional calories, your body will grab weight like mad the moment you resume your old eating ways.

Do diverse exercise on a regular basis. Make healthy eating decisions.  Don’t jam down half of your daily caloric intake late at night and eat your junk in moderation.

It isn’t rocket science, just a bit of common sense and personal responsibility for your own health.

So my plan for Saturday was to get up early, do the group run and then go straight into the office from there.  There was a bigger crowd at the run than the week prior, including some of the guys I have run with before like George and Jeff.  However I wound up running with Matt.

Matt  is a much more accomplished and faster runner than I will ever hope to be,  however he was coming off an injury that prompted him to run at what is a more leisurely pace for him.  Well Matt’s leisure pace equates to me pushing my speed.  I wound up covering the 7 mile run in the fastest time ever at an 8:55 pace according to my Garmin.

Another nice aspect of running with Matt is he is a self admitted chatterbox.  Our conversation helped make the run go by quicker, even if trying to talk was somewhat difficult for me at various points on the route.

After a thorough toweling off session and a change of clothes I was on my way to the office.

Typically the job of a network administrator is not a very physical one.  Hence why you see so many of us that are built like bowling pins.  Saturday however was an exception to that norm. We were slinging around servers that in some cases weigh close to 75 pounds each.

We have two racks of servers at the office.  Over the years through the addition and subtraction of equipment the racks have gotten progressively more unkempt.  We just completed rewiring the NOC a couple months back, cleaning up the racks was the last stage of the project.

Initially I had hoped to get both racks done on Saturday but that didn’t happen.  It didn’t take me long into the process to realize this was going to take awhile.  It took us five and a half hours just to redo one rack, I wasn’t going to put in a 10 or 11 hour day, plus I actually needed some longer cables anyway to wire things the way I want. Unfortunately this means for the second weekend in a row I will be working Saturday.

The one rack we did look significantly better.   With a server rack you can’t tell a whole lot from the front of it.  It’s when you step around the back end and are exposed to the myriad of wires and cables where you can tell how much care was taken during the installation.

By the time I got home I was beat. Getting up to run and then following up with high tech labor had left me drained.  I almost immediately retreated to the bedroom for a nap since Ali wasn’t home.  When she got back around 4 I was still dozing.

We had plans Saturday night to go see Thor at Silverspot.  We had not been out to the movies together in quite awhile.  I purchased the tickets on Friday and landed the best seats in the house, at least for me, top row, dead center.

We decided to also eat our dinner there.  We both had meals we enjoyed.  We had a nice kid as our waiter although he appeared to be spread a bit thin as he outright forgot to bring a couple things like a second Diet Coke for me and some water for Ali without a second reminder.  I still gave him a solid 20% tip as I felt generous.

Ali wasn’t very thrilled to see Thor going in.  I wasn’t super stoked to see it but my expectations were heightened by the lavish praise Howard gave the movie since he is a hard core super hero fan.  After we sat down in our primo seats I was surprised to see the guy right next to me was one of our fellow running club board members, what a small world.

I opted for the 3D version of the movie.  Even though 3D has lost some of it’s “golly gee” factor at this point, I still will opt fo it over 2D when given a choice.

Being a big comic book reader as a kid, I was familiar with who Thor was but only in a very surface way, I had no back story on him.  I just basically knew he was dude with a winged helmet and a kick ass hammer.

Well the movie did a nice job of filling in all of that back story.  It did so in a very thorough but entertaining way. The movie was great.  I enjoyed it almost as much as Iron Man and the fact that Thor didn’t have the weak ending that Iron Man suffered from makes it almost an equal.  I give the flick a solid A.  Even if you aren’t a super hero nut I am pretty confident you WILL like this movie.

On Sunday morning the skies were very gray.  Looking on radar I saw a line of thunderstorms coming ashore.  I had originally planned to go bike and then swim at the water park.  It started to rain, hard, between 7 and 8.  Despite the wet conditions I loaded up the bike under the bed cover in the truck, intent to still give it a go.  My plan was to go to Home Depot first, hoping that by the time I got to the water park things will have cleared up a bit.

Well I pulled into the water park parking lot at 9:30 and the skies still looked very menacing.  I looked out at the roads covered with puddles and decided to scuttle my plans.  Not only was it wet, it was also windy.  The combination of the two would make for a pretty miserable biking experience.  I headed back home, frustrated but yet somewhat relieved at the same time.  Mentally I just was not all that into it if I was being honest with myself.

The reason I went to Home Depot was to get some JB Weld.  JB Weld is supposed to be the equivalent of a cold weld.  Earlier in the weekend I had noticed a hissing noise out by the water equipment.  After using my ears and eyes I zeroed in on the source, a pin hole in the side of the pressurized water holding tank.

Well I instantly knew this was not a good thing.  The pin hole means the inside of the tank is rusting to the point where it is now breaching.  As I looked closely at the tank I saw a bunch more spots that looked like potential pinholes.

After emptying the tank I wire brushed and lightly sanded the actual pinhole and it’s potential siblings.  I then mixed up some JB Weld and applied to all of the affected areas.  The multiple spots of black on a light colored tank certainly didn’t look nice but I hoped it would at least buy me some time.

After letting the stuff set up for a few hours I repressurized the tank.  I was not thrilled to see droplets forming around the pinhole, it still leaks although at least it wasn’t blowing air.

So now we have a dilemma.  I did a quick check and to just replace the holding tank would probably run us close to $2k.  It hardly seems worth it to me for a few reasons.  The tank itself is less than 6 years old.  To have it rust out in that amount of time seems short to me.

The water equipment in general just doesn’t perform very well, our water more often than not has a a slight discoloration despite my best efforts to maintain the equipment.  To throw that kind of money on a system that doesn’t really do what I want it to do seems dumb.

What would be ideal is to replace the equipment with a whole house RO (reverse osmosis) system.  These systems deliver bottled quality water to every fixture in your house, even with crappy well water as the source.  Now of course this convenience comes at a price.  We will easily spend more than double what it would cost to replace just the holding tank alone. Plus an RO system requires filter changes and produces a TON of waste water during the cleaning process.

So my plan is to get at least three quotes on whole house RO.  I know the technology has matured a bit over the last half decade, hopefully it will result in slightly lower prices.

My brother Patrick competed in his third Pittsburgh Marathon on Sunday.  He turned in an INCREDIBLE time of 3:05 and change.  It was actually a fast enough time to qualify him for the Boston Marathon which is extremely difficult to do. He is a great all around athlete but has been focusing on his running the last few years. He has plans to even do an ULTRA run in June which will be a total of around 80 miles.  You basically run all day long.

The last part of my Sunday was very laid back, I didn’t do much in the way of labor.  The lack of motivation that I woke up with followed me the rest of the day.  I am in the heart of the full moon darkness for me, which is the few days before the actual lunar event.

I did manage to try out the swim tether.  Let me tell you, swimming in place is way harder than swimming unshackled.  My initial goal of swimming 8 minutes straight in this manner was quickly aborted.   Having no momentum and constantly fighting against a device that is trying to pull you backwards makes the activity incredibly more challenging.  You can see some video Ali shot of it here.

Today I am finally getting around to doing something I have wanted to do for probably at least 3 or 4 years, get my testosterone level checked.  I have had some symptoms that are associated with low test levels, most notably an absence of feelings of well being and tiredness.  However I never have taken the step to do much about it, due to apathy and my general dislike of anything medically related.

Through reading up on the subject, I learned that many times men with low testosterone are misdiagnosed and simply prescribed anti-depressants to address the symptoms of low test instead of addressing the cause of the problem itself.

It might seem odd to the casual reader of my blog that I would think I have low test based on my general fitness level and the amount of physical activity I subject myself to.  Who knows, I may be totally barking up the wrong tree but at least I will know once and for all.

Instead of talking to a doctor to get the test done I went the self service route.  You can’t just walk into a lab and ask for a blood draw, it has to be ordered by someone in the medical field.  Well there are websites that will act as your virtual doctor, you basically check off what tests you are looking for, pay for the test and take a form along with you to the lab.  You get your results emailed to you normally within a day.  It allows me to just get my number without having to have a conversation with a doctor that I would rather not have.  The number will determine my next step.

Lowering testosterone levels are a normal part of aging however if the number is low to start with there are ways to address it.

Haha, look at the post dated exactly one year ago, what a coincidence.

Ali was surprised by news of my scheduled test.  I had mentioned to her a long time ago I thought I could have low testosterone but she had no recollection of it.  I didn’t mention anything to her ahead of time of my plans to get tested this time.

Ironically, despite my suspected low test, I made my first attempt at the hard mode version of this month’s Bar-barian challenge. I only managed 6 reps.  My stork legs make the leg raise portion of this challenge very hard.

Last night Ali once again made the quiche that features mostly items from our garden and once again it turned out really well.  It’s quite tasty.

Although I had a day off (on) Wednesday, I am paying for it by having to work on Saturday.  I am ripping apart our server racks and redoing them.  It will entail a lot of labor, gutting the racks completely of around 20 devices and then reinstalling them with extra care to the routing of the cables in the back.  Right now the back of the racks are a big mess.

Saturday night I am hoping to go see Thor with Ali at Silverspot.  We haven’t been out to the movies in a little while.

I am not sure if we will manage to get to the water park or not on Sunday.  Since I have the Naples triathlon coming up in a few weeks it would be smart to get some bricks in.

On Tuesday I left work early to attend the seminar.  The parking pass and instructions I received earlier in the day indicated the seminar was supposed to start at 5pm.  Since I wanted to make sure I had spare time in case I hit traffic I left the office shortly after 2 for the drive across the alley.

I initially had thought about grabbing a coffee for the drive across but I felt relatively alert so I didn’t bother.  It didn’t take me long until I regretted that decision.  I stopped at the first rest stop to grab a cup of stale, bad tasting java.  Despite the bad taste it did the job.

When I arrived at the stadium I had some confusion.  My letter indicated I should be entering Gate G.  Well after driving around the stadium twice I confirmed that the entrances were all labeled numerically.

I eventually had to ask a guy directing traffic where the hell Gate G was.  He told me to go into Gate 4, the main gate.  Um ok, makes perfect sense.

I pulled out the parking pass I was sent.  It was a blue pass that allows you to park anywhere almost.  It also appeared to be valid for the entire season.  I told Randall I would send it to him in case he got a desire to go catch a game this year. As I approached the stadium I realized that Gate G referred to an entrance to the stadium itself, not the the parking lot.

I asked the security guard where I should go.  He wasn’t sure so he directed me back towards the executive offices.  As I walked back I admired the various baseball artwork on the walls.  It was a pretty cool to be in an area of the stadium that most people never see.  It also brought back the aspirations of being as pro baseball player that dominated a good portion of my youth.

I eventually came upon the reception area.  I explained to the women at the desk I was here for a seminar.  I was greeted with confusion, even after showing them my confirmation letter.  Eventually they found reference to the meeting on some list.  They said the meeting wasn’t actually scheduled to start until 5:30.  Evidently the 5pm time was posted to make sure people are there on time. In total I wound up dilly dallying around the area for close to an hour before the seminar started.  I spent the time doing a lot of looking around.

Finally we were allowed up to the meeting area.  We were directed to a conference room upstairs that was labeled as the Executive Clubhouse. It was pretty awesome to be sitting around the large table that is used by Marlins executives themselves.

The seminar itself was pretty standard affair with Powerpoint presentations and sales pitches, specifically about the virtues of virtualization,  especially when using products like VMware and EMC.

There was one large annoyance during the presentation.  One of the attendees thought it would be neat to bring his young boy along, I would imagine the kid was 7 or 8.  For maybe the first 45 minutes of the 90 minutes presentation the kid managed to sit on a chair in the perimeter of the room and do some coloring.  However after that his patience expired.

The rest of the meeting he was a constant distraction, talking, throwing things, rolling on the floor and basically just being a 7 year old.  His dad did a piss poor job of disciplining the kid, just asking him to be still/quiet and having his request repeatedly ignored without consequence.  It was really annoying.

The game was supposed to start at 7:10.  Unfortunately at 7:05 the presentation was handed off to the VMWare guy.  He wasn’t interested in getting short spaced on time and probably took up another 20-25 minutes, causing us to miss the first few innings of the game.

We were lead up to the suite level.   I was immediately impressed.  We were along the third base line and had a great vantage point.  The suite was also stuffed with food and a fridge full of beer, all complimentary.

I spent most of the night standing as opposed to being seated in the front of the suite.  I split my time between watching the game and talking to the reps from the host companies.

I had noticed during the main presentation that the Mac Airbook Pro used for the slide show had a World of Warcraft icon on it.  I approached the main presenter and said “I have a very important question for you.”  The guy straightened up and prepared to answer what he assumed was a technical inquiry.  “Are you Alliance or Horde?” I followed.  The guy laughed when he realized that I spotted his WoW hobby.  I was relieved to find out he played Alliance as I do.

The game was a real pitcher’s duel with Roy Halladay going for the Phillies and Josh Johnson for the Marlins, two of the best pitchers in the game.  The Phillies blew a number of golden opportunities early in the game, walking away from bases loaded situations twice without scoring a single run.  Ryan Howard, despite his solo home run early, came up real small late, striking out twice with the bases jammed.   He is such an all or nothing player.

The Marlins managed to squeak out a second unearned run late because of some sloppy play by the Phillies.  The Phils went down quietly in the the 9th to close out the 2-1 loss.  Oh well it was a bummer they lost but it didn’t do much to change what was an overall very positive evening. If you would like to see all of the various pictures I took you can see them here.

The one downer was the prospect of the long drive back across the alley late at night.  I once again stopped at the first alley rest stop to grab coffee.  I had a weird thing happen there.

As I was heading towards the vending machines I saw some guy in my peripheral vision over towards the women’s bathroom.  He was looking at something on the wall in a way that looked like he was not really looking.  I then saw him disappear down the hall toward the bathroom.

As I got closer I looked down the hall I saw two entrances to the women’s bathroom and no guy.  Now I didn’t know if the guy was a janitor or perhaps nighttime security but my initial instinct was he was just a perv.

The coffee machine was right outside the hallway to the women’s bathroom.  I hung out at the machine and in the lobby for a few minutes as I saw several women enter the bathroom.  I was basically waiting for one of them to indicate that there was a man hanging in there.  If that happened I was ready to walk in there and confront the guy.  After waiting maybe 5 minutes and seeing a few women go in and out I figured my assumption was incorrect and I left.

I got home about midnight and collapsed into bed after taking a shower.  I was glad I arranged to take Wednesday off.

The dogs were not very interested in my sleeping in, they had my up and out of bed around 6:30 am, I felt pretty pooped as I trudged through the house.

As you read in my prior entry, I had planned for my day off to be more of a day ON, filled with various projects I wanted to get done.  The first of those was added late via a request from our Michigan based neighbors to help them pick up some used furniture they bought in my truck.

The stuff barely all fit into the back of the Tacoma.  I drove back to our place very carefully as one of the items was a tall TV unit that could have easily tipped if I made a hard left turn, despite the couple bungee cords I had over it.  The front of the unit was covered with smashed love bugs by the time we made it back, lovely.

After we unloaded the furniture I was immediately on to my list.  Obviously everything I posted on Monday as possible to do’s couldn’t get done, but I took out a nice chunk of it.

One of the items was changing the oil and filter in both the Camry and Tacoma.  After doing that I decided to try a trick I read on the Camaro forum for removing love bug residue from the front of a vehicle, dryer sheets.

You are probably scratching your head as I first did when I heard this suggestion.  How can dryer sheets help with bug guts removal?  I don’t know why either, but it works.  You simply wet a dryer sheet and start wiping the area on the car affected.  In most cases the goop wipes right off the car with nearly no effort, it works great!  After you are done you want to wash the area affected, if you don’t the dryer sheets can leave a residue. I used this technique on both the Camry and the truck and had similar positive results on each.  I even told my neighbor about the trick and he used it successfully on his car as well.

I cleaned up the cabbage palm with the machete and then turned my attention to the tractor.  I have noticed for a month or so that it was sounding unusual while mowing.  It sounded like something was rattling and loose.  The noise has gotten progressively worse.  My plan was to pull the mower deck off to see what the hell was going on.

Once I got the deck off I didn’t see anything obvious right away.  I started turning the blades and felt unusual resistance which I thought at first was just from grass packed around the pulleys.  After removing the grass it still felt weird.

I spun the blades some more and observed the deck.  I saw that the center fixed pulley appeared to be spinning erratically.  When I took the pulley apart some ball bearings dropped into my hand.  Ah, problem identified, the bearings for this pulley failed.  The bearing actually was more or less disintegrated. I was surprised the whole deck hasn’t blown apart from the heat this must have been generating.  I hopped online and spent $40 to get the bearings and a couple other parts I needed for the deck.

The last target I had on my list for the day was to finally get the 3 additional raised beds set up.  In order to do that I needed garden soil and lots of it.  Ali and the dogs accompanied me to Home Depot to load up 18, 2 cubic foot bags of dirt.  If you have ever picked up one of these bags of dirt you know they are pretty heavy.

Once we got home Ali assisted me in getting everything set up.  Before we got started I sent a text message to the other neighbor asking if she could take inside her eternally barking chihuahuas since I had already spent a good portion of the day listening to their maddening squeals. No, that situation has not improved.

The garden project was pretty extensive.  First we popped out the plants that were still planted on the right side, a few broccoli plants, a huge swiss chard, an asparasgus plant and a couple tomato plants.  After that I came in with a rake and leveled the area.  Then we assembled the beds one at a time and then filled each with 360 quarts of dirt.

We put the beds close together, only leaving enough space between them to get the shuffle hoe through which also happens to be just wide enough for my foot.  We then transplanted the items we popped out back into their new raised homes.  Ali also planted the few new items I bought, eggplant, avocado and romaine lettuce.

We still have some open bed space that Ali is going to plant some items from seed, mainly corn, beans and carrots.  I’ll take a picture of the new arrangement.  Both Ali and I are looking forward to getting even more yield from our garden with the addition of these beds.

We didn’t get done until well after 6pm.  I was quite pooped from busting my ass practically all day long.  Days on are tough.

Last night after work I made a pit stop to get two very manly items, motor oil and Mortal Kombat.  I bought oil and filters to change out on both of the Toyotas, hopefully tomorrow.  Mortal Kombat for the 360 was a purchase spurred by numerous kick ass recommendations from various electronic sources.  Even though I still have two of my Xbox games in shrink wrap from Christmas, I was definitely going to give the new MK a try.

I used to play a lot of MK when it first came out in the 90’s although I was never a stellar player.  I knew a few moves on a few characters but I was never hard core enough to go much deeper than that.  To be truly good at the game requires both lighting quick reflexes and precise joystick control.

I opened up the game and looked for a manual to give me the basics on how to play this latest iteration.  I had only played the first two versions, there have been many subsequent MK games.  Well the manual is basically non-existent.  The closest thing I saw was a pamphlet that tells you how to play online. Luckily the game has a decent tutorial mode to help fill in the gaps.

I did some tutorials, including practicing the insanely gory finishing moves.  I quickly saw why this game was outlawed in Australia.  I don’t even know how someone could think up of some of these animations.

The game play is very fast paced and more or less what I remember.  The primitive players like me can get by, at least early on by using simple strategies which is good.  After trying a few different modes I settled in on playing the single player story line.  I found this rather fun as it mixed in real time combat with the Mortal Kombat plot.  You get to play many  different characters in this mode.

I stayed up until after 11 last night mashing buttons with my headphones on in bed. It was a good time.

Today will be an unusual Tuesday.  I am leaving mid-afternoon to head to the eastern part of the state to attend a cloud computing seminar.  Ugh, pretty boring right?  Yea I would agree normally but this event had a twist that sparked my interest.  The seminar is being held at Sun Life Stadium and after it is complete we get to enjoy dinner and watch the Marlins/Phillies game from a box suite!

It should be pretty damn cool and the best seats I ever have had to watch a MLB game.  The fact that they happened to be playing the Phillies made it a total no brainer.

I will be driving back across the alley late tonight.  To make things less tiresome on Wednesday I took the day off.

Ironically, although I am taking tomorrow off from work to supposedly recover, the reality will be I will be working, just at home.  I came up with a long list of things that could/should be addressed during my unusual mid-week respite from work.  Want to hear them? Sure you do.

1. Change oil/filter in the Camry and Tacoma
2. Clean up/organize the small shed
3. “”        ” the garage
4. Machete off a bunch of dead wood on several cabbage palms
5. Shoot a hard mode video for this month’s Bar-barian challenge
6. Shoot a squat set for Jeremy so he can critique my form
7. Pull off the mower deck, replace the blades and see if the rattling sound goes away
8. Plant some abandoned potted plants into the color garden
9. Set up the three additional raised beds in the garden

In addition to these possible items, our part time neighbors from Michigan who are down for a few days requested my help in picking up some furniture they bought.  I hope to get that out of the way first thing.

In addition to all of these items it would be nice to “relax” for at least a small portion of the day playing WoW/MK, watching Dexter episodes or The Event on Tivo.

Unfortunately, since I stopped creating physical lists of chores to do since they bothered Ali, many times something that popped into my head during the week as a “need to do” gets forgotten in the cobwebs of this 43 year old brain.  Believe it or not, I know there are a few more things that I earmarked as needing to get done that I can’t recall at this moment.

When Ali got home from work she said that maybe she could take tomorrow off as well so we could go take the dogs to the beach or something.  I told her I had an agenda in my head already but if she was really into it I could change directions.  She said it was no big deal.  We should have some free weekends coming up where we could do a dog day trip.  I’ll add it to the list.

Ever since I did deep squats on Wednesday my legs were killing me.  I wanted to run with the Saturday morning group.  Friday night I got out the foam roller and tried to roll some of the soreness out of my legs.  I woke up Saturday at 4:45 am with legs that were still sore but I deemed them good enough to go run.

The group run was lightly attended because there was a triathlon in Fort Myers that many people were participating in.  I got there about 10 till 6 and there were only a few cars in the lot.

As I was outside stretching to get loose it started to rain, hard.  I figured I was going to be soaked with sweat anyway so I didn’t see any point in trying to escape the precipitation.  In a very short period of time I was thoroughly soaked.

Well I decided to just start running instead of standing there and getting soaked.  I didn’t see any of the people that run a pace similar to mine anyway.

I wound up running the entire 7 miles by myself, not exactly why a drug myself out of bed and drove 25 miles for.  When I reached the halfway water stop I noticed my nipples were hurting.  I looked down and saw the wet, bloody streaks on my chest.

I was just wearing a cotton t-shirt.  Evidently having it pre-soaked in the rain accelerated the raw nipple syndrome.  I pulled off my sopping wet shirt and ran with it in my hand for the trip back.

Despite running by myself and the bloody nipples, it felt good to get a longer run under my belt.  I think the last time I ran 7 was at least a month ago.

When I got home after a brief WoW session I began the weekend’s labor. In addition to weeding, feeding the birds, tending to the garden and cleaning the pond pump I also elected to do full lawn maintenance, mowing and weed whacking.

Ali and I went on a brief biking session Saturday afternoon on one of side streets near us.  It was literally the first time Ali has been on her tri bike since her crash.    Ali was quite tentative about riding the bike, she is basically scared of the bike now.  I understood her fear but also told her the only way to get past it is to just get on the bike and keep riding.

She took turns between the normal and tri bar position.  She was literally shaking when she would stop at the end of the street.  Ali isn’t much of a risk taker in everyday life, when you throw in a scare like she had on the bike, it is going to take awhile for her to overcome.

At some point during the weekend she was saying to someone how she absolutely does not want to take her new bike out in traffic and will just use it for races.  I immediately pointed out to her that that proclamation made no sense.  You are going to do all of your training on a different bike than you will use in a race?  I told her if that was her intention we should just return the tri bike.  She later revised her statement saying that for now, she doesn’t want to use the tri bike on a busy road.

I took her tri bike out on the road myself for a short test ride later in the weekend.  Ali said how it feels so much different than her battle tank Dawes road bike, so I wanted to see for myself if I noticed anything.  I must have looked ridiculous riding a bike that was a foot too short for me.  The bike is light and nimble but I didn’t notice anything overly sensitive compared to what I am used to.

Of course I have a lifetime of bike riding experience. Ali has a fraction of that.  Unfortunately it appears that my trepidation of her jumping to this sort of bike based on her experience level had some foundation.

Around 4pm we loaded the dogs in the van for one of their favorite things, a trip.  We had to go down to the running store to pick up the last minute paper entries for the race.  The excitement the simple question “Wanna go for a ride?” generates on the dog’s faces is hilarious.

Saturday night Ali made yet another bang up meal using many components from our garden.  This time she supplemented some left over ziti and tomato sauce we had with vegetables and turned it into a type of casserole.  It was really good.  She hit two dinner homeruns in one week.

Our Mother’s Day started incredibly early to get up for race timing.  In this race I proposed a change to the way we handle the sign in of pre-registered runners where we would break the runners into three different lines based on their last name.  The change seemed to work well as the normal mile long pre-registration line we see at most races never developed.  Everything went smoothly, until 32 minutes into the race.

I had walked away from the timing table to go post interim results.  When I got back to the finish line I noticed something looked different.  The window for the program that links to the timing box was not there, WTF????????  This program captures the times as they are posted real time, no program, no times.

I quickly fire the program back up but by that time there was a 5 minute window of times that I missed, great.  As I was scrambling for a game plan I theorized that somebody walked up while I was away and was hoping to get a peek at results.  They probably intended to minimize the program window, mis-clicked and closed it instead.

There are two issues there.  First, obviously nobody should be touching my f’ing timing laptop when I am not there. We didn’t have the timing equipment covered with a tent, it was just laid out on a table so maybe it didn’t look “official”  and “hands off” enough.  Second, a program as important as the timing interface shouldn’t be able to be closed so easily by a mis-click.  In the past, it used to pop an ARE YOU SURE? box before it actually closed which would save you if you didn’t actually mean to close the program.  Somewhere in recent version of the program, this function was removed.

We will be making an effort at future races to discourage touching of my stuff.  I also sent a request to the timing software author to reinstate the safety net in the program. Luckily I found another way to recover those 5 minutes of missing finish times.

There has been talk in the club of the need to have additional people trained to run the timing system.  I agree with the general premise, I can create a basic how to for the process that would allow someone to get through a race.  The issue is when something goes wrong.  If this issue popped up for someone else working off of written directions they had zero chance of figuring it out.

After we got home I hurriedly finished up my post race work so we could get ready to pick up mom for a Mother’s Day lunch date.  We decided to go to Carraba’s since they were open for lunch.  We were pleasantly surprised when we pulled up, the parking lot was not even a third full.  We sat right down in a nice booth.

We had a standard Carraba’s experience with really good food and a really nice waiter without breaking the bank.  Mom especially enjoyed her meal.

We gave Mom a Publix gift card along with her card, meal and plant.  It is a very practical gift for her to help with the slim budget she is living on.  When we dropped mom off back home she said now we didn’t have to be “bothered” with her for awhile.  The sad thing is I think she may actually believe I view it that way.  I think she transposes the way she feels about my grandmother onto me which is totally nuts.

When we got home I knocked out the remaining indoor chores.  Ali said she just wanted to chill to enjoy the rest of her Mother’s Day so after a couple hour nap she watched tv and read some of her mountains of reading material.

On Saturday night I saw some sobering news on Facebook.  A former classmate of mine was killed in a car accident.  He was a popular kid in school that played many sports.  He was actually a teammate of mine on the bowling team.

I am still young enough that it is a pretty shocking event when one of your peers dies.  From what I understand, Steve had 5 kids, adding to the tragedy.  Rest in peace buddy.

I am sore all over.  Much of the soreness is the result of doing full depth squats Wednesday at the gym to pacify that power lifting freak,  Jeremy.  Since I haven’t squatted in forever my legs have not responded well.  My original plan for Saturday was to get up and go run with the group but unless I get a pretty dramatic reduction in soreness between now and then I’m not so sure it’s going to happen.

Last night Ali made a dish that included items from our garden like broccoli and onion.  It was a quiche like thing that turned out really good.  It was one of the best tasting meals she has made.  It needs to get a little gold star next to the recipe in the cookbook.

I felt pretty wiped out and tired last night.  I was in bed shortly after 9 and out like a light by 9:45.  I have been feeling a little run down lately.  My exercise routine with the 300’s, free weights, running, biking, swimming, body weight exercises plus the occasional volleyball tournament here and there gets the best of me now and then.  Not to mention the physical labor that occurs around the household on a weekly basis.

Sadie cracks up me up.  After work I had to stop at the pet store to grab some bird and dog food.  I was feeling generous so I bought two oversized, peanut butter flavor “bones”.  These things were pretty big, about the size of a paper back book.  On the wrapper it said it provided 75% of the daily energy requirements for a 75 pound dog. (Sadie is around 55 pounds)

So after the dogs ate dinner I presented them with their special “desert”.  Sadie immediately snatched hers and took it to her dining spot of choice, the chaise lounge on the lanai.  Nicki did what she normally does when she gets a special treat, carries it around and cries, looking for a place to “bury” it.

These bones were pretty hard, I was unable to break it in two with my hands.  That didn’t slow Sadie down a bit.  Within 15 minutes she had consumed the entire thing.  Nicki on the other hand hadn’t touched hers and instead was carrying it around with her.

So we were eating dinner and watching TV when I saw Sadie heading for the dog door.  She had Nicki’s bone in her mouth, evidently it was left unguarded.  I spotted it just before she got out the door and yelled “HEY” at Sadie.  Without slowing down for a second, she dropped the bone on the floor, knowing she was busted and headed out the dog door.  She later came back in and was hovering around me acting remorseful for trying to steal Nicki’s treat.  She really is a funny dog.

This weekend is Mother’s Day.  I am going to celebrate by getting up at 4am on Sunday to time a race and then taking mom out to lunch at Carraba’s later.

So last night I tackled installing the second panel of super screen.  It went much better for a couple reasons.  Ali was home last night so she was able to assist me in holding the screen in place while I installed the spline.  Speaking of the spline, the 1500 foot roll of super screen spline was MUCH easier to push into place.  I had the top section of spline installed in a minute instead of the 20-25 minutes it took to do the same thing the night before.

Despite being noticeably heavier and thicker than normal screening, you can’t see an appreciable difference when you look at the cage with the two screen types installed side by side.  I am hoping this will be the last time those two panels have to be replaced for quite awhile.  I have more than enough super screen and spline to replace all of the vertical panels of the cage as needed. It was nice to get the screen replacement done during the week instead of having to tie up a large chunk of the weekend doing the repair.

While I was cleaning up the materials from the project Ali put on her bathing suit to try out the swimming tether I bought for her.  One of the bad things about trying to do serious swim training in our pool is you are turning around every 10 seconds.  This tether attaches to your ankles and then connects to a stationary object, in our case, the pool rail.  You then swim in place, instant endless pool.

You would think that being strapped in by your ankles would be somewhat annoying but Ali said it wasn’t bad at all and she was doing just kick board training.  It will be interesting to try doing a full swimming motion.  All of the reviews I read on the product online were positive.

So I turned on Sirius this morning and heard a “best of” show.  At first I was like WTF? Is Howard sick?  I hope nothing bad happened.  Then I remembered a conversation he had last week saying this week he was going to start his 3 day work week bullshit.  He said that every other week he will be working a three day week and then a hideously long FOUR day week.  It annoys me.

Yes, before Stern apologists chime in, three days of the show is better than no show.  But let me add my perspective.  If you are like me, the ONLY reason you are still paying for SiriusXM is because Howard is still there.  Before the new 3 day a week deal his live shows were already off the air more than THIRD of the year.  Now he will start creeping up on only working  50% mark.

If he was on free radio I would feel much less justified in complaining about this, but since I am paying for a service that I basically can’t stand otherwise, I am angry that I get less and less for my money while being charged more and more for it.

There really is a part of me that wished he would have just rode off into the sunset.  Sure going cold turkey would have been painful but I would eventually fill the void and be done with f’ing Sirius as well once and for all.

Last night after work I was quite busy.  First I quickly shot my first attempt at this month’s Bar-barian challenge, the Bender.  I am running the challenge this month.  Ironically, the move and the name was suggested by Jeremy.   I have three different levels of difficulty set up but in a nutshell it is a pull up followed by a leg raise.  I only got 7 reps on the normal mode, it is a pretty taxing movement.  So far the guys on the forum seem to like the challenge, kudos to Jeremy for suggesting it.

I wanted to make some headway in installing my super screen in at least one of the two damaged screen sections.  I broadcast the event on Justin.tv but later found out there was something screwed up so I only got 9 seconds of footage instead of the two hours it actually took me to do ONE panel.

The section of screen I was working on is on the far corner of the cage where two wire supports are attached.  After removing them I was able to easily remove the old screen.

When I did my first screen replacements a few years back I always used to have Ali assist me, especially when doing the initial spline along the top.  It’s tough to do with only one set of hands.  However the most recent screen replacements I have done, I have done solo, managing to get the process started myself.  I figured I could do the same thing with super screen since Ali wasn’t home.

Well I quickly discovered this was not going to be easy.  Super screen’s strength means it is also much heavier and thicker than normal screening.  The additional weight made it tough to hold it in place correctly while trying to get the spline started.  This was made even more difficult because thicker material did not want to seat firmly with the spline.  I struggled mightily getting the top spline in, it took forever.

I was frustrated enough as is.  That was multiplied by listening to our neighbor’s one chihuahua bark at me almost incessantly the entire time I was out there.  The neighbor was not home.

I later texted her to let her know the dog was still a habitual noise maker.  She has not bought the citronella collar she said she would or inserted any sort of visual barrier in the dog run area.  She actually indicated that the dog may eventually find a new home.

Apparently it chronically uses the house as a bathroom when it is inside.  I strongly support the dog finding greener pastures elsewhere with someone that is better equipped to deal with the needs of a chihuahua.

Anyway I worked until darkness on the screen.  I got it in place but didn’t have time to do the final trimming of the excess.  I can definitely understand why super screen holds up so much better.  The difference between it and the cheap stuff I buy at Home Depot is night and day. The installation is a bitch though, it sucked, plain and simple.

When I finally went inside I jumped on the Super Screen web site to see if there is a special spline that is used for the product.  What I was using was Home Depot flat spline.  I saw that they indeed did sell Super Spline and it is slightly more narrow than regular flat spline to accommodate the additional stiffness of super screen.  I told Ali it looked like I had another early morning road trip to Fort Myers lined up for Wednesday.

I pulled out this morning a little after 6 am.  I was at their location right before their 7 am open time.  I purchased a 1500 foot spool of super spline which should meet my screening needs for the next decade or so hopefully.  While I was there I also bought a pack of 100 super screws.  Super Screw have a nylon capped head that will not rust like normal pool cage screws will after several years.  I figured I will replace the rusty ones right now and maybe eventually replace most of them.

During the drive up and back I was inhaling a lot of smoke even with the windows closed at the AC set to recirculate..  The entire area is covered in smoke from some brush fires that have been burning in the the Everglades.  Evidently the wind recently shifted.  It is very thick and strong smoke, might be the worst I have experienced since living here.

Man I was feeling pretty beat up this morning.  The swelling in my right knee has gone down but both my feet still hurt from playing volleyball.  My upper body has various sore muscle groups as well.  My first 2 minutes of walking in the morning probably looks like I stepped out of a geriatric unit.