Archives June 2011

This should clear it right up for you.   Maybe even pull you out of that fog that has enveloped so many individuals in the country the last decade or so.

Last night after work I attended the monthly running club board meeting.  As the lengthy meeting was wrapping up some intense thunderstorms were rolling in.  I got soaked just in the brief dash from the door to my truck.  The drive home was pretty nasty with near blinding rain.  I hit a couple patches of standing water on the road that sent 20 foot high plumes of water over the sidewalk.

When I got home I finished the soaking process as I removed the items from the truck and then stood in the rain with the dogs so they wouldn’t be afraid to pee.  I then had to retrieve the one chair on the lanai that had blown into the pool. When I came back inside I stripped off my sopping wet shirt.

Our area really needed the rain so in the big picture it was a good thing.  Unfortunately this storm was pretty nasty and knocked out power for over 30,000 people in the area.  Luckily we were spared and kept the lights on the entire time.

I had a funny moment later in the evening.  As I stepped into the shower and started getting wet I looked down and saw a cockroach.  How nice.  It was alive.  I assumed it came out of one of the drains.

Well my no kill policy on living things even applies to cockroaches, at least in small numbers.  I turned off the shower and stepped out to grab a tissue to snare the bug.  For some reason, I didn’t feel like bothering to cover up since I was soaking wet.  I walked through the house to the garage, naked.  I planned to throw it outside.

Now of course I hadn’t lost all sensibility so I didn’t want to appear in my birthday suit for all to see in an inappropriate place like the garage.  Before I hit the button on the opener I looked for something to cover up the important parts.  That something turned out to be the lid to the trash can.  I hit the button to the door, held the lid over my mid-section and threw the unwelcomed visitor outside into the rain before immediately closing the door.  Ali was up in the office and was not witness to this oddity.

When I was reading this month’s Wired magazine I saw an article about a new company one of the Twitter founders created called squareup.com It is a service that is designed to make it incredibly easy for the normal Joe or small business to accept credit cards for payment of goods and services.

When I set up the Google checkout store for the running club I did a lot of investigation about credit card processing and merchant accounts.  Setting up a merchant account required a bunch of steps and hassle.  On top of the normal per transaction fee there are numerous additional ancillary charges including a flat monthly fee, minimum monthly transaction fees and a large cost for an actual CC reader.  With Squareup, that all goes away.

They charge you a flat 2.75% of the transaction price if you swipe the card.  If you are keying the data in the charge is 3.5% plus 15 cents, either way it is a sweet deal.  On top of that they send you a free reader that works with an Iphone/Ipad and Android phones.

When you take a payment the money shows up in your bank account the next day for your first $1000 in monthly sales.  Once you cross $1000 they hold the funds for 30 days which I assume is one way they can offer such low fees.

Signing up was incredibly easy.  In the span of 5 minutes my account was created and verified.  The verification process is pretty interesting.  You enter your name, address, phone number and the last 4 of your SS number.  You get verified by answering various questions based on your credit report.

The first application that came to mind for this service was for the running club.  It could give us a way to accept credit card payments on the day of the race, something that has been requested by race participants on a consistent basis.  Of course the situations this could come in handy are nearly infinite.  Check it out yourself.

It looks like Ali was unfortunate enough to pick up a common side effect of getting crammed in an enclosed space with other human beings for hours on end, she started feeling sick yesterday.  She started feeling ill early in the day and last night was showered and in bed very early for her. It’s not great timing since her training schedule for both the marathon and Olympic distance triathlon are supposed to be ramping up in earnest now.

I just set up a Drobo at work and it is damn cool.  What the F is a Drobo you asked?  It is a NAS/External HDD rig.  There are tons of NAS devices out there and I have seen a lot but the Drobo is the coolest I have had my hands on.

The Drobo makes raid simple.  You basically throw SATA drives in the unit and it will configure what you have for maximum storage along with maximum redundancy.

It is hot swappable, comes with simple as dirt indicator lights and software that makes it easy to monitor the health of the unit.  There is no need for matched drives you can throw anything into the box and it will use it.  You can also grow the size of the unit dynamically, all they way up to 16TB by simply swapping out a smaller drive for a larger one, one at a time until you do all the drives.

If you are looking for an external HDD enclosure on roids or stand alone NAS, I highly recommend taking look at their stuff.  I will be using this unit as direct attached storage for my Backup Exec 2010 R3 server.

I noticed the other day that it is full moon time again.  I made note that I didn’t feel as awful as I normally do during this time of the month, cool. Well yesterday my buddy at work stepped on a landmine.

What began as a request for assistance got real ugly real fast.  When I asked for further info about a problem my buddy made a comment about how I don’t believe what he tells me and if I didn’t want to help him he would just figure it out himself. He flipped the switch.

I was pissed that just because I wanted more info about the problem that he twisted that into me not wanting to help him.  I responded angrily at first and quickly accelerated to enraged when he continued to engage me further.  The f bombs were flying out of my mouth fluently, I am sure quite a few people in our section of the building heard the ruckus.

When my co-worker saw the flames shooting out of my eyes he said that he was only kidding about me not wanting to help him although I didn’t detect any sense of kidding when it was said.  I told him if that was true, I apologized for flipping out.

Later he stopped in my office and said it was a bit scary, he obviously had never seen me uncorked before, very few people have.  I apologized again later in the day.  Even if what he said pissed me off it was not cool to go nuts on him as a result.

I guess I didn’t escape the month’s cycle after all.

So Randall wasn’t due to arrive at my place until somewhere around 7 on Friday.  I figured that would work out well, it gave me time to work on setting up my second Xbox.  I had it hooked up in the bedroom in a few minutes.  I slapped my old 60 gig hard drive on it and started the process of updating the software on it, it looked like the 360 had not been used on the internet in ages as it had the old, old version of Xbox Live on it.

This Xbox came with the wired adapter for the controller.  I opted to use that instead of pairing one of my wireless controllers with the 360.  While software was downloading to the Xbox I decided to multitask and headed out to the kitchen.  All of a sudden I hear a loud crash followed by Nicki SPRINTING out of the bedroom.  Oh no….

I turn the corner and see the 360 on the floor with all of the cables yanked out.  When I left the bedroom I did so with the wired controller laying on the bed.  Well evidently when Nicki followed me out she managed to get herself tangled in the wire, panicked and ran.

My instant emotion was anger.  I yelled at Nicki even though I knew it wasn’t really her fault, saying dumb stuff like “How could you not see the wire there?!!” even though I knew there would be no reply.  Nicki cowered because of my obvious anger.  I later comforted her when I calmed down,  after all it was really my fault.

So now I had to attend to the 360.  My worst case scenario was my new used 360 was now dead from the impact. When I plugged it back in I was pleased to see it still powered up although I immediately noticed a fan noise that was not there before.

Knowing of the 360’s history of overheating I knew a noisy fan was not a good thing so I decided I had one option, rip it apart.  I hopped on YouTube and in a few moments was watching a video outlining the tear down of the hardware.  Along the way I got some background on the Red Ring of Death issue along with a novel way to fix it.

With my years of PC repair experience ripping apart the 360 wasn’t hard but if I didn’t watch the video I would have struggled since there are a bunch of little hidden plastic snaps to be released.

As I was taking it apart it became apparent that the unit had been ripped open before.  I am pretty sure it may have been fixed for RROD already which is cool.  With the cover off I plugged the 360 in to verify where the noise was coming from, it was one of the two case cooling fans.  When I unplugged the 360 I spun both fans.  The quiet fan spun freely, the noisy one stopped after a few revolutions.  Great, the fan is f’d up.

Then on a whim I took my hands and grasped the noisy fan and squeezed it on the center hub.  I felt and heard a reassuring “CLICK” like I just pressed it back into place.  I spun the fan by hand again and it spun freely.  I plugged the console back in a viola, no more noise. Sweet.

I put the 360 back together and took it back to the bedroom to continue the configuration.  I ran into another issue.  I no longer had a network connection. WTF?  After some troubleshooting I eventually figured out what I think happened.  When the 360 was pulled off the dresser it yanked all of it’s cords out, including the CAT 5 cable that is actually snapped into place.

When I did some examination of the network port on the 360 I saw some of the wires appeared bent.  I grabbed my dental tools and after some frustrating, tedious manipulation had the wires back where they should be, or so it seemed.  Despite my labor I was unable to get the hard wired network  connection working. Perhaps if two of the wires when power was applied touched it could have damaged the port. Great, so now a USB wireless adapter will be required to get the 360 on the net.  I was annoyed as Randall pulled up.

I had a frozen pizza in the oven for dinner.  Randall had made a stop at the Catholic Town Publix on his way in.  He reported he actually had to wait in a three person line at check out, wow they must have been PACKED.

While we ate pizza we watched a Netflix item that was recommended to me, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virgina. This documentary is about some redneck, trailer trash family in West Virginia.  It has to be seen to be believed.

Sue Bob is probably my favorite White.  She claims she is the sexiest of all of the Whites.  The problem is if you close your eyes and listen to her voice you swear you are listening to man, a very deep voiced man.  Every scene that involves her speaking is just solid gold.

Pretty much every member of the family is on drugs and most of them are collecting government disability and do not work.  If you want to see the end result of government entitlement program abuse, look no further.  If you have Netflix add it to your queue now.

After the flick I was surfing on my Xbox and found a little gem in their downloadable game content, the original Track and Field.  This game came out in the early 80’s and I was a HUGE fan.  I can’t tell you how many quarters I dumped into the machine over the years.

The control was simple.  You had three buttons.  Two buttons you hit alternatively to run and a third for actions like throwing and jumping.

I was never great at the game, only getting middle of the pack scores.  I often would watch in amazement as people would generate tremendous speed using various techniques like the two fingers on each button technique or even the pencil lever trick.  I used the standard two hand slap fest method.

Well the game on the 360 was only 499 Xbox credits so it was a no brainer, I downloaded it.  Randall used to play the game as well so he was into it.

In our early matches Randall had a definite speed advantage using the buttons to run although I still won many events with better timing of the action button.  Later on when I discovered that I could also run by moving the thumb stick back and forth Randall’s speed advantage was gone and I won almost every event.  It didn’t take long until those old familiar Track and Field pains came back.

To rapidly hit buttons or slap a thumb stick back and forth you tense up the entire side of your body.  My index finger literally was sore the next day, funny stuff.  Late in the evening I actually played an Xbox Live T&F game against someone else.  He generated incredible speed.  I can only assume he is using some sort of special controller technique to do so.  Even though he beat me I put in a respectable showing.

Randall was up and out the door around 6:30 Saturday morning to head up to Siesta Key for a volleyball tournament.  The plan was for us to catch Super 8 that evening when he returned.

I set my alarm for 6 am to make sure Randall was on his way.  I also figured getting up early would get me a jump start on the day, something I always appreciate.  After easing into the day with some WoW play time I started on stuff around the house.

After knocking out the rather large weeding session I turned to this weekends designated auxiliary project, tree trimming.  The pygmy palms in the front of the house were badly overgrown and received attention first.  Then I hit both oak trees followed by the coconut tree in the back.

The right tree had a few low hanging branches as well as some that were almost hitting the house so I lopped them off, it was pretty minor work.  The left tree was another story.

This tree is smaller but has now grown into the line of sight of my Directv dish.  I have always had in the back of my mind that I would eventually just have to cut this tree down.  However instead of doing something that severe right now I instead cut the parts of the tree that were in the way.  This was pretty grueling work with a pole saw. The branches of an oak tree have thousands of these tiny little “fingers” that make it difficult to get a clean angle to saw.

Trying to cut relatively thick branches high above your head with a pole saw is physically challenging.  Doing it in 90 degrees and humid weather makes it all the more challenging.  As I was cutting away I did my best to make sure I was not disturbing any bird nests that have popped up in this tree from time to time.

After a good 45 minutes of dirty, sweaty work I had once again given my dish a clear view of the sky.  From the front of the oak tree you can’t really tell how severe of a chop I performed but from the side you surely can.  It looks like a big machete lopped off much of the back half of the tree.  Hey, I need to see the Eagles.

After a dip in the pool I went out to run a few errands, I had a number of things I needed to get.  I took the party van and brought the girls with since they love a trip more than anything.  I figured each stop was going to be very quick.  I locked the van and left it running with the A/C blasting.  I have a spare key.

One of the stops was at the local nursery.  My initial desire was to find something to replace the tree that I plowed into with the neighbor’s mower which subsequently died.  I decided to go with a Plumeria.  They can grow into beautiful trees that produce awesome blossoms.  The downside is they are sensitive to cold, especially when they are small.  I am just crossing my fingers that we avoid a deep freeze this winter.

While I was there I spotted a hand edging tool, just like the old one I got from my great uncle which broke during the the HD antenna installation.  I used that tool to bury a bunch of wire so I was happy to find a new one.

I also had to go grab the wireless Xbox network adapter.  The $69 price tag meant my 360 that was originally a deal was now not much of one.  Oh well, at least it works.

So I was actually unwinding later in the day, awaiting Randall’s return from Siesta Key.  It kept getting later and later, I had not heard a peep from him.  It was now 6pm.  The movie started at 7:25.  I figured Randall would show up any minute, have to take a lightning fast shower and we would roll out.  Well at 6:15 I get a call from Randall.  He was just LEAVING Siesta Key now (90 minutes away).  WTF??

I was baffled on how it could take so long, especially when he later told me they lost in the first round of playoffs.  So we had to improvise.  I told him I would just meet him at the theater.  I gave him crude directions over the phone and texted them to him as well.  I told him he would have to call me when he got there as there was no way he would arrive before the movie started.  I would have to then come out, flash my electronic ticket and get him in the theater.

I arrived at Silverspot around 7 and ordered a chicken finger basket that I took into the theater with me.  I had my phone out with the ringer turned off so I could spot his incoming call.

We had decided to see Super 8 after originally talking about seeing Hangover 2.  I had no problem making the switch based on my movie theater philosophy.  Certain films just get no benefit of being viewed in a theater among them are chick flicks and comedies.  I’ll be just as happy watching Hangover 2 on my 71 incher at home.

To be honest I knew next to nothing about Super 8 going in except there were two very high profile names involved, J.J. Abrahms and Steven Speilberg and it was about something weird going down in a town.

About 15 minutes into the movie my phone lit up, it was Randall announcing his arrival.  I scurried out to get him in.  I thought the movie was great.  The story was very well written and interesting.  It had a bit of an ET (ok a head chewing ET) like vibe with the movie being based on a group of young kids.   I was very glad we opted to see it instead of Hangover 2 at the finish. I’d give it an A.  Randall liked it as well.

When we got home Randall filled me in on his day of volleyball which sounded pretty frustrating.  He said his last game in pool play was against a team that had a sandbagger.  It was bad enough that he sandbagged but he also was the worst case of an over warm upper that I have ever heard.  Randall said that between he and his partner they hit at least 50 warm up balls which is unreal, especially that late in the day. I would have been insane.

Randall’s playoff game sounded equally frustrating when they lost to another one of my most hated things, a co-ed team playing in the men’s division.  Not only did they lose, they lost after holding a pretty big lead.

This was the tournament series that last year played under old school rules and also included free Corona beer for players.  This year they removed the beer and reverted back to current rules.  Throw in the hotter than hades heat and I was quite glad I missed the event.

Even though I wouldn’t have minded sleeping in on Sunday, Randall said he would rather get out the door early to do our ride to avoid some heat.  The plan was to do the Dunkin Donuts ride (20 mile round trip) and then head to the water park where we could run/swim.

Randall was interested in trying out Ali’s bike.  He hopped on it and the seat height actually looked ok.  I jumped on my Dawes and we took off.

Randall and I exchanged lead rider roles half way, I was ahead the first 5 miles, Randall lead the middle 10 (broken up by coffee break) and I did the last 5.  In the past when Randall and I have ridden together he has had to consciously slow down to allow me to hang with him since he does tons more riding than I do. This time that wasn’t the case.

I think the extended cardio work I have been doing along with additional leg strength work has helped me improve despite still not putting many miles in on the bike.  We averaged right about 20 mph on the way out and over 18 on the way back into a headwind.

Randall did say he felt some significant differences riding the tri bike.  Unfortunately he wasn’t really able to test out the tri position the bike is made for very much.  When he got on the aero bars his knees were grazing his elbows.

After a brief pool and splashy splash session for Sadie we changed gear for the next part of the brick.  When I got to the water park around 10 I decided to grab our passes right away.  I was immediately annoyed when I approached the window and read the sign stating the lap/dive pool was closed for maintenance until further notice.

As much as I like the water park, they really do a poor job fixing things there.  The high diving board has been closed for “maintenance” for at least 4-5 months.  The dancing sprinklers that little kids love are broken and closed again.  The on site lockers have as many broken units as it does functional ones and NOW the lap pool is broken again.

Actually the explanation I got from some kid lifeguard was now the low diving board is broken and for some reason that means the entire diving/lap pool had to be closed.  That makes no sense to me. So I went out and told Randall swimming is off the agenda. He wasn’t all that disappointed since he isn’t a great swimmer.

We headed out on the run.  Randall hasn’t been doing much running recently but he said he would try to keep up with me.  We ran together until the 3 mile mark.  At that point I told him I was going to go ahead and push for the last mile of the 4 mile jaunt.  When I got back Randall was nowhere to be seen.

I was a bit concerned as he was really struggling towards the end of our run. I had visions of him passed out from heat stroke or something.  I walked around out on the sidewalk trying to spot him which I eventually did, just before I was going to start going out on the trail looking for him.  Evidently he bagged it at the 5k mark and walked back.

We headed into the park and almost directly to the lazy river, we earned some laziness.  We had three relaxing loops around the circuit, including three trips through the “rapids” where they dump water on you.

After that we had lunch and unfortunately were joined in our meal by swarms of flies, they were constantly on you, not much fun. We both sort of dozed off a little bit under the umbrella after lunch before we headed home.

I treated Randall to a couple episodes of Hoarders Sunday afternoon.  We both were amazed at just how f’d up human beings can become.  Randall told me later that like us, he wound up cleaning some shit up at his condo when he got home later.

Randall and I grabbed dinner on his dime at El Apetito before he headed back east.  I thanked him for the company since Ali was away.  It was a fun couple days.

My Monday was designated as a relaxing day for me.  I tended to sweeping the floors and some laundry but did no heavy lifting.  I did throw down my first entry in this month’s Barbarian challenge, knuckle push ups.  I grinded out 40 reps with solid form.  I hope to at least hit my age before the month is done.

I did a lot of WoW on Monday, something I haven’t done much of at all in recent months.  I left the house to pick up Ali for her scheduled 4:45 arrival at the airport at 4:15.  I had with me a small vase with various flowers I picked from our property, something I have done before.

I heard my phone ring when I was about 10 miles out.  Ali said it was her third time calling me, somehow I didn’t get or hear the first two calls.  Evidently her flight was ahead of schedule.  I felt bad as I pulled up to the terminal and she was pretty much the last person waiting.

Of course I had the party van with the dogs along.  They were very happy to see their dog mom.  Sadie wasted no time hopping up on Ali’s lap and staying there for the ride home.  I had talked to Ali for a while the night before on the phone so I knew most there was to know about her trip. I stopped and grabbed us a Publix pizza for her welcome home dinner which she appreciated.

Last night was low key.  Ali was pooped from her trip that had a lot of go go go in it. She was glad to sleep in her own bed.

Swiss cheese elbow

Description:

1. The act of injuring your elbow while opening a zip lock package of sliced swiss cheese

2. Injury normal occurs on the anterior elbow surface

3. Injury typically occurs in adult caucasian males over the age of 40

So I hurried home last night so I could feed the dogs and then head out to the Ave Maria Publix.  You see, unlike most Publix that close at 9 or 10, this one closes at an early bird special time of 7pm.

As I pulled into the Ave Maria complex I drove by the now infamous abandoned gas station/convenience store.  This building was started, almost finished and then promptly abandoned.  I assume whomever built it saw the writing on the wall of Ave Maria’s colossal implosion and decided to cut their losses and run.

To catch people up to speed that may not know, Ave Maria was the first new catholic university launched in the last three decades.  It was designed to be a nearly self sustaining town literally in the middle of nowhere.  The university was supposed to be the hub of luxury homes, golf courses, shopping and more.  This was the brain child of the founder of Domino’s Pizza, Tom Monaghan.

Well Ave Maria had awful timing.  They broke ground towards the end of the construction/real estate boom.  By the time they were open for business we were firmly in the grease covered slide to the bottom.  The last time I heard they had sold only 10% of the homes in the area.  All of that proposed retail never happened, except for the Ave Maria Publix.

As I pulled into the 95% empty parking lot I had my choice of several front row parking spaces.  As I entered the store that is in the shadow of the massive Ave Maria church I was greeted by perfectly faced aisles with nobody in them.  I think I could have counted the customers on one hand.

Since the store has a totally different layout it took me longer than normal to find my items.  Luckily the list this week was pretty short.  They had one check out line open with nobody in it.  I was in and out of there in about 20 minutes.  I almost felt like I should have genuflected as I walked out the door.

The rest of my night went smoothly.  I did some prep of the guest room.  Nicki gets very excited when she sees us stripping the bed, she knows it means someone is coming.  She will be excited to see Uncle Randall I’m sure.

My weekend with Randall should work out well.  He is actually using my place as a launching point to head to Siesta Key Saturday to play in a vball tourney with Tabby.  Then he will come back and hang around till sometime on Sunday.  I will be able to get done what I need to around the house while he is at the tournament.

He is bringing his bike so we can put some miles in on Sunday. We also have tentative plans to go see Hangover 2 Saturday night.

As I mentioned, I have been real happy with using my Xbox 360 to serve up TV entertainment, especially with adding Hulu + to my arsenal which already included Netflix and Playon.tv.  I enjoy it enough that I think I am about ready to dump the Tivo that is in my bedroom.

Right now I have been migrating my 360 between the bedroom and the great room as needed.  It’s a bit of a pain in the ass.  Last night on a whim I took a quick look on Craigslist to see if anyone was selling a basic 360 for cheap.  Low and behold I found one, a guy selling his unit since his son went to college and no longer uses it.  The price was right, $90.

I called him and found out he lived right of a road I use for my commute to work.  I asked him if he would be interested if I picked the 360 up early on my way in.  Surprisingly he said that was fine.

I rolled up to his house this morning at 7:30.  When I was greeted he asked me if I could talk quietly, evidently his other son was upstairs asleep.  He had the 360 hooked up to his tv so I could verify it worked, which it did.  We quietly completed the transaction and I was on my way.

I have some extra vaca days to use, even with the upcoming time off I have for my PA Rumble trip and the Ireland adventure.  I decided to burn one by taking Monday off.  A three day weekend just sounded nice.

Last night I did some proactive work to slim down the weekend chores by mowing the grass.  My mower deck repairs seem to have paid dividends thus far, the cut is level and true.  Certain areas of our yard have really rebounded nicely.

Over the winter there were many sections of the yard that were totally overrun with dollar weed, my arch nemesis.  I treated those areas repeatedly with weed and feed to try to keep it under control.  Well it seems the thick St Augustine grass that I have planted in various spots in the yard is starting to spread nicely to choke other yard weeds out.

Right now my favorite spot in the yard is the mound on the orchard side of the house.  It is a beautiful thick carpet of green.  I need to throw some St Augustine up front.  The bahia that we have up there doesn’t cover nearly as well.

Today I drop Ali off at the airport.  She is heading north for a few days to visit her family, leaving me again to be a weekend bachelor.  Actually I won’t be home alone very long, my mistress Randall will be hanging out this weekend to keep me company.

They finally posted the pictures from the triathlon yesterday.  Unfortunately they were just posted in bulk with no search ability.  Ali spent considerable time last night going through 2000+ thumbnails.  The only picture she found of me was this one. I look annoyed and exhausted.

Tonight I am going to buy groceries at the Ave Maria Publix for fun.  It is the closest I will get to a religious experience.  I have to make sure I get there early as they close at 7PM, they have special Catholic Town hours.  Although I don’t know where anything is in this store I always like having 4 employees for every one customer since the place is so empty.  It makes me feel important.

Now full blown pornographic pics of Weiner’s wiener are supposedly out there AND they announced his wife is 3 months pregnant. Ouch.  I imagine things on the home front are pretty awful.  You play, you pay.

Last night I watched some more content on Hulu Plus with the 360.  You may recall that when I cut the cord to cable TV I set up my PC with Playon.  Playon gives me access to all sorts of online content including Hulu, Netflix and most of the other available streaming stuff.  However I have found that I don’t use it much.

The gotcha with Playon is you have to it up and running on a pc on your local network to watch content.  That is kind of annoying.  There also seems to be a significant picture quality difference.  When I was watching native Hulu content on the Xbox last night the picture looked like a normal high def broadcast.  Most of what I get from Playon looks like SD or VHS quality at best.  Maybe I am more of a A/V snob than I realize.  Once you get accustomed to crystal clear HD images anything less seems like a major compromise.

So yesterday Jeremy was asking me my opinion on replacement smart phones.  He is getting ready to replace his which is long in the tooth.  He is doing his normal Jeremy thing, paralysis by analysis.  He has considered a large number of phones and asked my opinion on a few of them.  Of course my ultimate opinion is “just get an IPhone, they’re great”.  Well of course he has no interest in following my advice.

So anyway yesterday the phone of the day was the HTC Evo 3D on the Sprint network.  The Evo has all sorts of gee whiz features, many of which you will use one or two times, say they are “cool” and never use them again, like taking “3D” pictures that can only be viewed in 3D on the Evo.  He also mentioned how the Evo can act as a personal wi-fi hotspot.

Now lots of phones today can act as wi-fi hotspots.  The catch is the carriers want to charge you for this as an extra service, even if you pay for example, ATT’s “unlimited” data plan.  That is bullshit to me.

Well for whatever reason, this phone discussion with Jeremy got me thinking about jailbreaking my Iphone.  WTF is that you ask?

An Iphone in it’s standard configuration is rigidly controlled by both ATT and Apple.  Although you have access to hundreds of thousands of apps on the Apple store, you only have access to apps that THEY approve.

When you jailbreak an Iphone you are loading code that removes these restrictions, allowing you to load whatever you want on a device that you paid for.  I mean wtf, how would you like buying a computer and only be able to load things Microsoft says you can?  Or buy a car and have the wheels welded in place so you can never change them if you so desire? Sounds stupid doesn’t it?  Yet this is the business model that consumers have come to accept with their smart phones, especially from Apple.

When jailbreaking the Iphone was first introduced it came with an air of mystery, a seemingly daunting task best left to hardcore hackers that weren’t afraid of bricking(breaking) their phone.  However over the years this process has gotten more and more simple.  I had always steered clear of jailbreaking my phone because I just had a lingering image of it being a pain in the ass.  Well I finally got around to it yesterday.

After doing some investigating online I found out what I needed to do to accomplish the break.  I also found out that it is practically without risk as reverting a jailbroken phone back to normal state is as simple as doing a restore in Itunes.

Once I had the stuff I needed the total process took less than 10 minutes to accomplish.  The most difficult part of the procedure is making sure you do the combo button hold and releases on the phone properly to put it into the right mode to accept the jailbreak.

Once it was done the phone rebooted and came up normally.  All my apps were still there, everything looked the same except for the addition of a new app that is the jailbroken version of the App store, allowing you to easily peruse applications on the “open” market.

Another concern I had previously with jailbreaking was I thought it somehow would limit my “normal” use of my phone, stopping me from using things like Itunes and the regular App Store.  That concern was unfounded, I can still use these things just like I always could.

After seeing how easy the process was I regret not doing it much sooner.  Don’t get me wrong, the Iphone 4 is a fantastic device even in it’s prisoner form.  Now that I have released it from bondage I expect my appreciation of the device will only escalate.

Yesterday I finished watching Boondock Saints on my 360, I’d give the film a B by the way.  Anyway when I was done I was messing around in my Xbox dashboard and saw the free month of Hulu + promotion.  I figured I would sign up, why not.

Much like my trial with Netflix, I was immediately impressed.  Hulu and Netflix step on each others toes in some regards as some movies/programming are available on both services.  Hulu however really excels in current network programming, something Netflix just does not have.

I can use Hulu to watch network programming from Fox, ABC and NBC on demand as well as some other cable networks like Comedy Central, Sci Fi and many more.  If I look at this logically, it becomes more and more difficult to justify a Tivo.

With a Tivo I have a local copy of the show on my drive that I can watch IN MY HOUSE and if I feel like jumping through some hoops I could export the video files to other devices or watch it remotely using something like a Slingbox.  If it was 2005 you would say that was AMAZING. Tivos also break, pretty regularly.  The hard drives in the units take a beating.

Well now compare that to just having all of that programming available ON DEMAND without you having to so much as lift a thumb.  I can watch Hulu/Netflix on tons of devices, none of which are confined to the walls of my home and I don’t need to jump through a single hoop to get there.

There are only a couple remaining advantages I can put in Tivo’s corner.  Having the content on the local hard drive, delivered via cable or in my case, an HD antenna means you aren’t depending on an internet connection for your programming.

A Tivo also excels in quickly advancing through shows to exactly what you want, as in no commercials.  Skipping ahead or back in a video stream is clunky at best.  Hulu tv streams typically include commercials that you really can’t bypass although they are much shorter than what you would see in regular tv broadcasts. (minute tops)

Tivo is walking on thin ice with me.  I have two Tivos that I pay more than $20 per month for a service that is losing more and more value with me every day.

I read some of the transcript of Weiner’s Facebook communication with one of his many virtual girlfriends.  Yep admittedly, it was pretty damn creepy.  But again, I would offer up politicians and sexual escapades are pretty much the norm.  I mean WTF, JFK, regarded as one of the best presidents ever was a known hound.  Teddy, the respected senator, had the same MO.  Bill Clinton enjoyed an occasional intern BJ but the country flourished under his leadership.

I really am surprised at the fake surprise and outrage that comes up when such a situation is revealed again and again and again. All these people in glass houses need to put away their bags of rocks.

It was pretty strange feeling yesterday.  I had a strenuous sprint triathlon the day before but felt fine the next day.  I felt good enough in fact that I had a better than average session at the gym and followed it up with a post work run with Ali.

When I look back at just how problematic my knees have been in the past it really makes me appreciate the resiliency I have been enjoying now.  I think it has been a combination of things including my diverse exercise routine, stretching, supplementation and basically listening to my body when something hurts.

I saw last night Anthony Weiner finally decided to come clean and admit he was a closet sexter.  I have to love how big of a deal this sort of story is blown up to be.  I mean hell by this time, politicians getting caught with their pants down is pretty much routine.  It happens every few months.

I guess there are a few things that make Weiner’s case stand out beside the obvious irony of his last name.  He evidently was viewed as a political up and comer with a bright political future.  That future has suddenly become quite dim.

His initial attempt to cover up the pictures as a hack and not his doing have compounded the embarrassment.  Now he has to admit to being pervy AND a liar. (and a Twitter noob)

In the big picture, does it really affect the guy’s ability to do his job if he enjoys sending pictures of his junk and talking dirty to random women on the internet?  No, not really.  Does he have a chance in hell of keeping his job? Nope, the hypocritical moral police will crucify him.

Of course this doesn’t mean he won’t simply resurface later in another role.  Hell even Eliot Spitzer has started showing up again on tv.

I have been watching Boondock Saints on dvd over the last two nights.  I have been too tired to finish it yet.  It is a pretty bizarre movie.

With the triathlon looming for Sunday there was absolutely no way I wanted to have to do chores after the race.  That meant it all needed to get knocked out Saturday. Even though the grass was borderline shaggy I decided it could wait until after work some night this week.  Ali helped me outside and then inside.  We had things pretty much under control by lunch time, and then we watched a Hoarders episode…

This particular episode was very disturbing.  It went far beyond hoarding and deep into the depths of insanity.  This old woman’s house was just filled with trash, so much trash that it had several dead cats buried inside of it unbeknownst to her.  I can’t tell you how many times Ali and I were gasping in disbelief.

Well a funny thing happened after we watched that episode.  We started organizing. After Ali got done doing a much more thorough than normal vacuuming job she said she was actually going to clean out the bottom drawer of the lateral filing cabinet.  I have asked her to do this several times over the years as it was filled to the brim with pamphlets, magazines and paperwork that Ali thought she needed at one time or another but has not touched in at least a half decade.  By the time she was done she had filled the paper recycle box twice.

I began my own personal de-hoarding tasks, first cleaning up the hobby/fitness room AGAIN.  I keep cleaning it up and someone keeps managing to clutter it up.  After that I moved into the garage which was getting out of control.

With the hopeful purchase of a Camaro in at least the not so distant future I wanted to start getting things in order.  I shifted items around on the shelves in the garage so items that will be used less regularly are on the left set of shelves where the Camaro will be parked and the stuff I need access to weekly is on the right.

I also dug into my messy workbench area.  I got stuff cleaned up but there is more sorting/throwing out and organizing I can do.  I just ran out of patience.  I threw out a bunch of old stuff I just had no need for.  It seemed like whenever I installed something that had spare hardware I kept the extra stuff for a rainy day.  Well at this point I have enough spare stuff for a couple years of rainy days so I was ok throwing stuff out.

Saturday night we tried to get to bed nice and early so we had at least a decent amount of rest.  At first I thought I was going to have to get there even earlier than normal to help set up the finish line but luckily some other people that live closer were able to help so we got to “sleep in” until 4:15 am.

I had the repaired timing clock in the car as it was going to be used at the finish line.  I was not very happy when we got on site a little after 5:30 am to find we had to park close to 3/4 of a mile away from the finish line on the beach.  I had to lug the clock by foot that entire distance and no, it is not light.

I helped with various finish line set up duties until maybe quarter of 7.  That left me 45 minutes to get ready for the race.  I set up all my gear I needed for the transitions and then hung out.  I had a rather uncomfortable rumbling in my gut before the race even though I took care of business before we left home. Short of a 3 alarm emergency, there was no way I was going to do anything about it while there were swarms of triathletes descending upon the restroom facilities.  I talked myself down from the edge, rationalizing it is just a nervous stomach that will subside once the race starts.

Race time was approaching so Ali and I walked up to the start line.  This tri is different than most because it does things in reverse order, you run, bike and then swim.  This year they made another change, breaking the start into waves based on age.  It was by gender 40 and above, 39 and below and teams, a total of 5 waves.  I was in wave 1.

Ali I did a little jog up a side street to get a bit loose.  She was still very nervous about the event. She had been pretty negative about the whole thing leading up to the race which is unfortunate.  If you keep telling yourself you are going to do terrible in something, how often do you find yourself doing well in contrast?

Anyway we both wished each other luck.  The race organizers borrowed one of our megaphones to start the race.  Too bad the old guy that was using it didn’t do it very well.  It was hard to hear him for two reasons.  He had his mouth too far away from the mic and he had the horn pointed at a 45 degree upward so the birds in the tree heard what was going on quite clearly but nobody else did.

The race started and I was off.  I immediately tried to weed my way through the 25% and higher body fat competitors so I could get some clear running room.  My pace felt decent but I didn’t bother to look at my watch at all.

As usual I had certain visual targets during the run that I wanted to pass but there was one that stood out, red underpants man.  This older guy was sporting his 1979 style red Speedo style bottoms.  They barely covered his ass cheeks and were sheer enough that you had absolutely no question where his ass crack started and stopped.

Unfortunately for me this guy was a decent runner so I didn’t manage to pass him until 2 miles or so into the race.  When I finally did I made sure to speed up even more to eliminate the possibility of that visual being further burned into my mind.

They let the younger (faster) group go after us.  During the run the elites blasted past us like we were standing still, it’s just nuts how fast some of these guys are.

Like I said, I didn’t look at my watch at all during the run portion of the race but I felt like I was running hard the entire time.  I was quite pleased when approached the first finish line and saw a time of 24:39, my best ever 5K time by 5 or 6 seconds.  I didn’t expect that, a nice way to start the race.  Unfortunately things declined from there.

I jogged over to my bike and started my transition where I immediately was greeted with frustration.  The first thing I did was grab my helmet.  The chin strap on my cheap Bell helmet can be a troublesome to get snapped in.  I fumbled around with it for a good 10-15 seconds till I got it connected.  After putting on my bike shoes I grabbed a Goo, deciding it would be faster to try to suck it down on the bike.

I jogged with the bike to the mount line and clumsily got on.  It took me awhile until I could get both feet clipped in.  I would say at least the first half mile of my ride was very slow as I was trying to do the Goo and get a drink afterwards.  It was only after that I got down on my tri bars and started concentrating on going faster.

I had dismissed the ride as being relatively easy ahead of time since it was mostly flat and only 15k long instead of the more normal 20k.  Well I paid for that assumption.

Doing a PR on the run had left my legs feeling pretty spent.  A persistent headwind for the majority of the out part of the up and back added to that effort.   I stayed down on my tri bars pretty much exclusively.

I was passed A LOT on the bike portion of the ride.  Some glances at my watch indicated I was normally in the 18 mph plus range but even so I was getting my doors blown in by better riders.  Some of the bikers going by almost sounded like cars as they approached, especially those with the high tech solid rear wheels, they were noisy as hell.

With less wind on the way back my pace accelerated some but even so my overall pace was only in the 17’s which was a disappointment.  If you want to see me making a turn during the bike go to around the 1:20 mark of the video found here.

So all that was left was the swim.  Going into the event I was happy about the swim being last for a couple reasons.  The transition from bike to swim should be quick, all I had to do was strip off what I was wearing, grab my goggles and go.  I was also happy that having the swim last would avoid the huge cluster f that happens when the swim comes first.  I hate all the bumping, kicking and running into that occurs in that format.  Doing it last should mean the participants are streaming into the water instead off starting in one big glob of humanity.

Well I still managed to f up what should have been an easy transition.  After ripping off my clothes I started to run out of the area.  I realized I still had my sunglasses on my face and had to turn around and throw them on my stuff before I started running out again.  Then I forgot I didn’t have my swim goggles and had to run back AGAIN.  I was pissed off.

The transition to the swim is long.  You are running across a parking lot and street barefoot (some elected to keep their sneakers on)  I tried to run gingerly while making sure to avoid anything on the road that looked marginally treacherous like glass and rocks.  Finally I reached the beach area and started the swim.

After running into the water till I was about waist deep I started to swim.  About a minute into the swim as I am coming up to breath I see people next to me walking.  Evidently there was a sandbar off shore.  I thought it was kind of lame to be walking during what was supposed to be a swimming event so I kept swimming through the area.

As we approached the first of two right hand turns I started to hit a TON of bodies.  The water was quite murky so I couldn’t really see what was around me when I was underwater.  I sure did feel other people.  I had various appendages of mine hitting other competitors and various hands and feet hitting me as well.  I HATE this aspect of a triathlon swim.

For large portions of the swim I was doing it entirely dead legged, abandoning my side kick altogether to avoid striking other swimmers.  During the portion of the swim that was parallel to shore I was desperately just trying to find areas of water where I wouldn’t be colliding with people.  I quickly wound up swimming off course, having to correct several times when I realized I was swimming at least 25 degrees off the angle I should have been.

As we approached the second buoy I had to merge back into the log jam of bodies.  During that merge I somehow wound up next to a girl that was doing breast stroke.  I was dazed for a second as during one of her leg kicks her foot snagged inside the waist of my suit and momentarily pulled it down.  After a quick reach back to pull up I continued muddling along.

Getting around that second buoy was miserable, there were so many people converged there you had no option other then to basically wade around it.

Finally I was in the home stretch.  The sun was right in the swimmers eyes as we approached the shore.  My goggles were already somewhat foggy, with the sun I literally couldn’t see shit so I just tried to stay around the other swimmers.

Again we hit the sand bar coming in, this time it felt higher as I was hitting my hands on the sandy bottom.  I saw others on their feet so I decided to do the same, only to once again hit deep water that required more swimming.   When I was on my feet I made the mistake of pulling my goggles down in an attempt to see.  I didn’t want to waste time fumbling with them again so I just left them around my neck and swam the rest of the way without them.  Every stroke was greeted with total blindness in the water.

Finally I emerged from the water and did my best to run up the incline to the finish line with an official time of 1:11:34.  To be honest I was a bit disappointed in the time based on my good run.  I figured I would be able to get under 1:10.

After drinking some much needed water I returned to the water to cheer on Ali and Christie.  Christie had a great race, coming in about 1:21 and change.  Ali finished about 10 minutes after that.  Ali wasn’t thrilled with her time but was happy she finished the event.

After the race we enjoyed the very nice complimentary breakfast accompanied by live music.  I checked out the results.  Unfortunately they were only the cumulative times.  I was more interested in how my splits broke out.  I did see I was 37th in my age group which is nothing to write home about.

Late in the day the full results were posted.  It seemed like my lack luster time on the bike and longer than they should be transitions really hurt me.  There was a huge block of finishers around my time, just saving a minute would have made a huge jump in my standings.  I was surprised that my official swim time was 9:36.  It felt much slower than that with all the congestion.

Since running/triathlons is just another part of my fitness regimen, I don’t get all that bent out of shape if I don’t do great.  It just helps motivate me to do better next time.  I have done exactly that so far.  Each of my 4 triathlons have had better numbers than the one prior.

When we got home we were both glad our chore list was basically clear.  After taking showers and eating lunch we laid down and took a must needed nap.  I slept for a pretty solid two hours, Ali was back there another hour or so.

Ali made another great meal for supper, another quiche like meal with chopped up onions, broccoli and tomatoes from our garden.  It was quite tasty.

This morning I officially signed up for the Tough Mudder in Tampa which occurs in early December.  Tough Mudder is a GRUELING 12 mile event that is dotted with 21 physical challenges along the way.  Randall has committed to doing it with me.  My sister Meg recently completed a tough mudder in PA.  Take some time and read about what it involves.  It should ridiculously exhausting but exciting at the same time.