Archives July 2011

Ali was very excited that on Saturday morning she didn’t have to get up early.  It was the first time in quite awhile that she didn’t have to get up early to either work, run or swim.  I let her stay in bed while I started on chores.  Knowing Ali was going to be leaving Saturday afternoon made me want to get as much done as early as I could.  I even treated Ali to breakfast in bed during a break in the action.

Ali did come out later and run the tractor while I weed whacked the property which was nice.  It was one less thing I would have had to do.

Once Ali left my work continued but first I wanted to quickly buzz my hair.  I pulled the rugs and shelf out of the guest bathroom and did the deed in front of the mirror.  Working the clippers in this way was much easier than some of my past efforts trying to do the same thing while looking at the viewfinder of a camcorder.  I did a pretty solid job if I do say so myself.

I then loaded the girls up in the van to go get some more small project supplies.  I needed new brackets for the collapsed garage shelf and some gutter sealer.

The shelf that collapsed was 6 feet long.  It originally only had three supports.  This time I went with the “2 foot rule”, installing a total of 4 brackets to support the shelf.  It now should be able to hold more weight although the pool chemicals were already relocated to a new permanent home on the industrial strength wire shelf unit.

I then pulled out the ladder and headed up onto the roof with my two tubes of gutter sealer.  My plan was to use it to seal up the new super screws that were leaking instead of reinstalling the rusty original screws.  I had plenty of sealer left so I headed around the roofline and gooped up other seams in the gutter that I knew had leaking problems.  I had a close call when I momentarily felt my balance tip towards the ground below when I was getting up from the highly pitched roof angle.  Luckily I was able to reverse my direction before it was too late.

My work on Saturday was pretty relentless, in addition to the projects described I attended to various indoor duties like floor sweeping, counter cleaning, laundry and dishes.  I wanted my Sunday to be pretty clear of “must do’s”

I decided even though Ali was not around it shouldn’t stop me from doing a brick on Sunday.  I drove down to the water park and did a bike/run/swim.  I pulled my best average pace ever for the Livingston Road ride, keeping an average pace of 19 mph even following Randall’s rules of timing where you don’t stop the GPS unless the bike stops moving.

It was hot and humid as hell so I decided to keep my run short, the same 2 miles that I did the week before.  I picked up the pace though, knocking over a minute off the time it took me to run the course last week.  My 1200 meter swim was pretty decent too. I was finished up a little after 11 and wasn’t feeling starved so I decided to forgo the normal pizza/fries lunch and instead just eat a healthier lunch when I got home.

You may recall that last week I had to abandon my high bar project because of high ground water levels.  I had resigned myself that short of a miraculous dry spell, the project was going to be postponed until the fall.  Well believe it or not, we went through the entire week with minimal rain.

I thought I would head out with the post hole digger and dig a new exploratory hole to see how deep I could go. I was pretty pumped when I got three feet deep before the hole started getting wet.  Now with my original 15 foot pipe section three feet would not be deep enough, but I thought that if I shortened the section by a foot or so I should be ok.

So I removed the three foot section of pipe and took the girls with to Lowes to exchange it for hopefully a 2 footer.  Lowes didn’t have any 2 foot sections in stock so I opted for an 18 inch section and a 4 inch section.  It turned out I just needed the 18 incher.  While I was there I also bought the biggest slip joint pliers they had to allow me to really crank the pipe tightly into the couplers.

On the way to Lowes I pass a Chrysler dealer.  Last week when I went there I saw they had a used Inferno Orange Camaro in the front of the lot.  Well I saw the car was still there this week so I parked quickly to take a peek, maybe there was deal to be had?

As I walked towards the Camaro I passed by a SRT Challenger.  I had to stop and admire it, it is a damn good looking car.  They really did a nice job of catching the aura of the original 70’s supercar.  The good looks come at a massive price, this thing stickered at $49k and change.

The Camaro only had 7,000 miles on it but it was missing a couple things that I would want like a 6 speed, the 2SS techno goodies and a top that folds down.  The price seemed a bit high for a 2010 model even with the low mileage, they wanted almost $32k for it.

So when I got home I immediately set to work on completing the high bar project.  I put the 18 inch and 4 inch section on the vertical part of the project and stuck it in the hole to see how close it was in height to the pressure treated mounting pad on the shed.  It was too high.  It looked like if I removed the 4 inch section it would be just about perfect so that is what I did.

I attached the elbow and horizontal section to the bar and again raised it into place.  Trying to manipulate the fully assembled pipe was much more challenging.  I was excited that it lined up almost perfectly right off the bat.

I took out my level and made sure both my vertical and horizontal spans were as close to level as possible.  I had to sink the pipe just a little further.  I did so by grabbing on and using my body weight as an anchor to pull it down into the wet sand just a bit further.

I made several trips up and down the ladder making sure everything was aligned.  I kicked a small amount of sand into the hole to stabilize the pole position a bit before climbing on the ladder again to screw the flange in place.  I drilled pilot holes in the wood to minimize the potential for it splitting later before driving four 3″ wood screws into the flange to secure the high point of the bar.

The skies had been getting progressively more menacing as time was passing.  By the time I was ready to cement in the base of the bar there were dark clouds all around me with rumbling of thunder.  Well despite working on what was essentially an 11 foot tall lightning rod, I was not going to abort the project at this point.

I quickly ripped open an 80 and 50 pound bag of concrete and back filled the hole, alternating between filling the hole with water, pouring some cement, adding more water, etc… until the hole was filled.   As I was finishing up the storm was basically right at our doorstep.  As I was putting the tools away the first few drops of rain started to fall, followed by a downpour.  I thought it was quite ironic that the summer rain waited until just after I finished to let loose.

I am curious how sturdy this new bar will be.  By it’s design it is definitely not meant to be swung back and forth on violently.  However it should be fine for supporting elevated up and down pulling movements.  I will throw my rings up on it this week to see how it holds up.  Compared to my pull up bar station, construction of the high bar was simple.  As a bonus I don’t have to worry about the wood warping which has already started on both the pull up station and the parallel bars.

Finished high bar

For those of you looking for the materials used in this project they are as follows:

(All pipe 1.25″ INNER diameter galvanized)
Two 6 foot sections
One 18 inch section
One 5 foot section (horizontal span)
One threaded flange
Two couplers
One 90 degree elbow
One piece of pressure treated 2″x6″
High quality 3″ deck screws
130 pounds of high strength cement

I will offer up a performance report of the new high bar as soon as I get a chance to hang up there. If you would like to see all of the pictures I took for the project you can see them here.

From High bar construction, posted by Shawn Duffey on 7/11/2011 (10 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher 2

The last thing on my “must do” list for the weekend was to pay the bills, something I NEVER do anymore.

For the first 5 or 6 years of our marriage I was the bill payer.  I brought an organized bill paying / budget system into the marriage that I actually picked up from my ex-mother in law of all people.  At some point I turned this responsibility over to Ali, I believe it was an effort to spread out household duties more evenly.

Ali has fine tuned and tweaked the process since she took over but it still follows the same general format we always did so I didn’t have to much trouble grabbing the financial reins once again.  Doing the bills put a big ugly spotlight on the end result of Rick Scott’s assault on the state employees.

You see this was the first paycheck of mine that reflected the new pension changes.  As a result I now have approximately $200 less coming in each and every month.  When you team this up with my salary being stagnant for three years and counting it is a rather large and bitter pill to follow.

I posted this on the Facebook page for a group that has been reporting on all of the shenanigans.

Well the new pension “reform” just started hit this last pay period. Anyone want to chime in how much less they are now taking home? I am out at least a couple weeks of groceries each month. Thanks Rick, so glad you targeted state workers that have in many cases gone without a raise for half a decade as a logical source to “tax” to fix a pension system that was not broken.

The idea of getting my pay cut to meet his political agenda has always angered me greatly.  Now that the end result of that agenda is actually grabbing dollars from my pocket that anger is amplified.

Ali returns Wednesday afternoon, leaving me to steer the ship alone for a couple more days.  The weekend went well I expect smooth sailing until she returns.

For a long time I have had a small post work routine I do at the house which involves crunches, push ups, pull ups and wall hand stand holds.  I always do the routine inside.  Last night I decided to take the routine outside and do it on/around my outdoor exercise equipment, I need to use it more anyway.

While I was out there I decided to do some extra hand stand practice.  I saw a video of a guy earlier in the day that motivated me to work seriously at it.  Like I said I have been working the wall handstand holds for shoulder endurance but I haven’t been doing much to work on my balance on my hands.

In the past my work on stand alone handstands typically would wind up with a series of painful back flops as I would tip too far forward.  It would only take a few of those crashes to discourage me before I would bag it.

I figured practicing outside on the grass could at least somewhat cushion the impact if I did more inadvertent back flops.  My first few attempts didn’t go too well.  I kept tipping over but I managed to fall sideways instead of on my back at least.  The way it is supposed to work, if you start tipping over you should be able to do a hand pirouette out of the fall to avoid the awkward back flop I am so good at.

Then a light bulb went on.  Even though I knew that finger tip pressure was supposed to be used to resist tipping over I realized I wasn’t doing it.  I tried a few more attempts where as soon as I got upright I forcibly pushed down with my fingertips to resist tipping.

I still found myself tipping but the fingertip pressure allowed me to spin out of it gracefully for the first time ever.  Then finally I actually held a handstand, only for a few seconds, but I held it.  It was pretty cool.

One of my body weight exercise buddies from Australia sent me a nice routine tailored specifically for handstand training.  I am going to really try to focus on it.  I taught myself to juggle, there is no reason I can’t do the same thing with handstands.

Shortly after Ali got home we were in the kitchen talking when we heard a very loud crash sound from the garage.  Oh shit, this can not be good. We both rushed out to see what happened.

I was shocked when I opened the door and saw the shelf on the near wall had collapsed.  On the floor I saw a puddle of bubbling yellow liquid which I quickly realized was the muriatic acid.  This shelf held pool supplies including the acid, chlorine tablets and three full jugs of liquid chlorine.  Evidently I either underestimated the weight of these supplies or overestimated the strength of the shelf I had them on.

Within a fraction of a second of visually identifying what happened I was hit with the fumes from the acid.  It was awful and instantly choked me as I breathed it in.  I told Ali to hit the button to open the garage door and get back inside.  The fumes felt like the variety that would actually kill you if you were unable to escape them.

Once the door was open I pulled the box of tent covers out of the puddle of acid, I had visions of the acid quickly destroying them.  The other stuff  in the bubbling acid was less crucial like the garage broom and some other small items that were on the shelf.  I noticed that one of the chlorine jugs that fell was also leaking from a small crack after the fall.  Liquid chlorine is pretty dangerous on it’s own but it was the least of my concerns.

I ran to pull the hose over while Ali backed the Camry out of the garage that was parked no more than 4 feet away from the shelf.  It is a MIRACLE that the acid did not hit the car, that would have been awful.  I pulled the hose over and started to blast bubbling acid out of the garage.  The fumes were still awful, even trying to breathe through my shirt didn’t help.

The acid had spilled right in the front corner of the garage, again a stroke of luck with it’s location.  It was collecting in that corner and spilling out into the driveway.  I blasted the area with the hose repeatedly until I was sure the acid was washed away.  Even though the acid was now gone, it’s effects were clearly visible.

As the acid flowed out of the garage it came in contact with the outer wall of the house.  It totally stripped the Rhino Shield from the wall, leaving a stripe of the white primer coat exposed.  The floor of the garage was altered forever as well.  In addition to the color difference you see in the picture, the area now is filled with holes and pits where the acid was literally eating the concrete. Man don’t screw around with muriatic acid, it will f you up.

So my new plan is to house all pool chemicals on the ultra-strong industrial wire shelves on the back wall of the garage.  I will make room for the stuff by relocating the gas cans to the small shed.  I really shouldn’t store gas in the main home structure anyway.

When I examined the shelf collapse remnants I found the supports that went wall to shelf were bent badly.  I estimate there was probably close to a 100 pounds on 6 foot shelf.  I will put another shelf in the same spot although I will be utilizing the heavier grade hardware this time.

After the incident Ali and I said repeatedly how lucky we were that it wasn’t worse.  If that acid hit the Camry it would have destroyed whatever paint it touched, possibly even eating into the metal.  I told her to imagine if we had the Camaro already and two cars were in the garage, it would have been ever worse.

Ali asked if the shelves on the other side of the garage were sturdy, fearing a another incident.  I assured her there would be no repeat incident.  They are screwed into cinderblock and I used expensive, heavy grade brackets because I knew the items on those shelves would be perched precariously over the Camaro eventually.

Ali leaves tomorrow for a few days for a dietetic conference.  I will keep myself busy as always.  I have a list of stuff in my head that is more than long enough.  I think it is time for my summer buzz cut.

Maybe I’ll see if the ground water level around my proposed high bar area has receded.

Ali asked me if I could run with her after work at the water park.  Since my 2 mile test run on Sunday went alright I told her I would go.  Ali really hates to run alone.

Today her training plan called for her to run for 40 minutes and part of the run was supposed to be 20 second fast cadence runs on a hill.  There is a bridge outside the park which would make do as her hill.

Of course a July late afternoon in Florida is very warm and humid, far from the best time of day to be out there.  It didn’t take long until I started minding the heat.  We ran the outer 2 mile loop around the park and then headed out onto the road toward the bridge.  Once we got there I stopped and acted as Ali’s timer, calling out 20 second intervals where she would change direction and run/up the hill using short choppy strides. She had a total of 8 intervals to do. After the intervals we ran back to the vehicles, the total run distance was 4 miles.

Again my knee held up fine, even after doing legs at the gym Wednesday that included a DEEP squat routine.  I was a sweaty mess.  Luckily after toweling off I had a dry third t-shirt in my gym bag to put on.

I received my made in China, generic 250 gig hdd for my new Xbox the other day.  I slapped it in and it worked just fine.  It was close to half the price of what I would have paid for the official Microsoft version.

Ali is going to be going out of town for a few days for a conference starting Saturday.  I am already in the planning stages for my various activities.

Having taken an extra two days of vacation to my extend my weekend is a blessing and curse.  Sure it is nice to have the extra time off, unfortunately I have plenty of things in my mental wheelbarrow of things to be addressed.

I started off my weekend Saturday morning with a trip to Home Depot for supplies.  I grabbed some river rock to fill in a few areas in the border around the house, a bag of rubber mulch to put around the pygmy palm in the dog area, a white eggplant, a roll of weed block, a new outdoor ceiling fan and two 10 foot sections of 1 1/4″ galvanized pipe.

The fan was to replace the unit on the lanai that had it’s fan motor die.  Mom requested I fix it before she dog sits for a week.  She has this weird thing where she likes having a fan on outdoors.

The pipe was for an impromptu addition to my outdoor exercise equipment that came into my head a couple days prior, a high bar.  Now you say that I already have an 8 foot high pull bar? Yes but I want a HIGH bar that can be used as a mounting point for my gymnast rings.  Trying to do ring work on an 8 foot bar has some limitations.  The bar I had planned would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 1/2 to 11 feet high.

I planned on utilizing the peak of the large shed as one anchor point for the bar.  I would be attaching the pipe in an upside down L configuration which would then be buried 4 feet into the ground and set in concrete.  It seemed like a solid plan.

Once I got home I started on various items.  Among them was my first lanai door rescreen.  The corner of the bottom panel had a tear in it from Sadie shoving her snout in that area in her anticipation of being let outside.  I put in a fresh piece of super screen that should hold up to future nose pressure.

I also did the ceiling fan swap which took longer than I expected.  I bought the exact same model as I had before.  I noticed on the box that the motor had a lifetime warranty, meaning technically the old fan should be covered.  But of course, who the F is going to take down a 3 year old dirty fan, throw it in a box and ship it back to them?

The most annoying part of the fan is getting all the wires connected.  I have a secondary electrical line tapped into the fan that powers the flood lights outside.  Trying to get all the wires twisted together securely was a PIA.  When I got the fan in place I hit the circuit breaker and was underwhelmed.  The fan worked but now the lights did not! WTF?

After some troubleshooting I discovered that I had the fan wire attached to the white instead of the black wire.  After reversing the wires I was happy to see the fan was now operating properly.  I had to leave all of my installation by product and the old fan laying on the ground because we had to get ready to go to our friend’s house for dinner.

We had not seen Rick and Michael for a long time, hell it may be close to a year.  They live relatively close to us in a beautiful courtyard style home.  The only bad part of it is that the house is in the estates where you are always rolling the dice with what sort of neighbors you will have.

When Rick lived next door to us it was fantastic, it was so nice having a friendly, helpful neighbor that took pristine care of their property.  Now I have had to endure watching the property decay into a ratty looking mess under the new owner’s care.

Rick has a similar problem at his new house where he is next door to people that have way too many animals in too small of a space.  Just by looking at the property I would think they could be related to my trashy neighbor.  In addition to barking dogs they have horses in a tiny little area.  Rick told us some wonderful stories of the horses roaming loose and using his yard as a dumping ground for their massive bowel movements.

Michael is the ultimate host.  He is constantly on the move making sure your drink and plate is full.  We brought our dogs with so they could interact with Zoe, Rick and Michael’s Jack Russell.  Zoe was Nicki’s first ever dog friend when she lived next door.  Zoe is getting up there in years so after our initial greeting she spent much of the evening sleeping in her dog bed.

Sadie had no problem making herself right at home, pulling out Zoe’s toys one by one and playing with them.  Before we left I think I picked up about 7 or 8 of them.

Like I said, their home is beautiful.  It literally looks like a home from a magazine.  Rick made it even better with a new cabinet/counter top addition he installed a few weeks ago.  He has always been very handy.  He did some high quality renovations on his old house next door that impressed me as well.

Ali and I had a nice evening there although we both piled into the van feeling like pigs from all of the alcohol and food.  We were both spent since we both were up since 4:45 in the morning.  Ali at least got a nap in although she did put in a hellaciously long 13 mile training run that morning. Who could blame her?

Sunday morning I was anxious to burn off the excessive social calories from the night before.  We planned to head to the water park.  I told Ali I would bike there and she could meet me at the park.  I planned to do a short run once I got there so she could ride her bike around while I did that.

I really pushed the pace on the ride. I also made sure to pause the GPS as I was coasting to a stop at red lights.  The end result was my best overall pace ever for a ride of measurable distance, 19.6 mph.  I was quite pleased maintaining that for over 15.5 miles.

I then did a short 2 mile run although it felt longer.  I had not run in close to a month due to Rumble related knee pain.  I wanted to keep the run short so I could test out the knee without putting undue stress on it.  I ran the two miles at a high 8 minute mile pace which was good enough for me.  The better news was the knee felt ok during it.

I finished off the brick with 1600 meters in the pool.  Ali has really gotten faster with her swimming since starting her training with the T2 group.  I can barely swim faster than her now where as in the past I could lap her pretty easily.  I guess those 5:30 am swims are paying off.

After eating our traditional pizza and fries water park lunch we headed back home.  Now most Sundays we are pretty pooped from our workout and we are able to relax the rest of the day.  Well my Saturday was very busy but not busy doing normal house chores so there was still a lot to do.

For the most part I left most of the chores to Ali while I started on what became a MASSIVE pressure washing project.  You name it, I pressure washed it.  I pressure washed so much that it actually carried over into a second day of pressure washing.  Over the weekend I pressure washed the bird cage, patio stones, landscape timbers, the inside of the pool cage, the outside of the pool cage, both sheds and parts of my body.  It was brutal.

The only positive I could come up with from all this washing was I was soaked as a result which was actually a good thing since it was so hot and humid.  By the time I finished I was just spent beyond spent.  Pressure  washing  is such a miserable house maintenance chore but very necessary due to the mildew and scuzz that grows on objects from the ultra-damp Florida summer conditions.

On Monday morning after spending a couple hours pressure washing the shed I had a bunch of errands to run.  The first thing I did was return the two 10 foot sections of pipe to Home Depot.  After I bought them on Saturday I realized I was going to have an issue.  I basically needed one of the 10 foot sections cut and threaded so I could connect the pipe together with couplers and an elbow.  Home Depot does not cut or thread pipe anymore.

After doing some investigation regarding the viability of threading pipe yourself (not viable at all), I discovered that Lowes will cut and thread pipe if you buy it there.  Great, I’ll just get the 10 foot pipe at Lowes and have them do cutting and threading.

So after returning the pipe to Home Depot I head into Lowes and quickly find their galvanized pipe section.  I see various sizes and lengths but the longest length was just 6 feet.  Surely the 10 footers had to be hiding somewhere?  I checked all of the surrounding aisles, no 10 foot sections. Damn it.

So now I had to reevaluate.  Like I said, Lowes had a number of different lengths available where as all Home Depot had were 10 footers.  I grabbed two 6 foot sections, a 5 foot section and a 3 footer.  My upside down “L” would have 15 feet of  height ( 4 feet buried and cemented in the ground) and 5 feet of width  that will extend out from the shed peak.

Ideally I would have rather had the 10 foot section for the tall part as it would be one less joint to deal with but this was going to have to do.  The ironic thing was the shorter lengths meant I didn’t have to get any of the pipe cut or threaded.  One more bonus, the pipe at Lowes did not have MADE IN CHINA stamped on it.  Possibly it is domestically made? It was more expensive than what I got at HD so there is a good chance it was made somewhere other than shithole China.

I had a number of other stops that were made along the way.  The girls loved the extended ride in the van.  In total we were out for over two hours.

So when we got back it was getting later in the afternoon but I thought I would start construction of the high bar anyway.  The first thing I did was take a small portion of pressure treated 2″x6″ and mount it to the top of the shed.  This wood is what I would attach the flange to that was to be screwed into the pipe.

I predrilled the holes in the wood to make attachment easier.  I still had issues using the conventional 3.5″ phillip head screws I had brought out.  While standing high on the ladder I was unable to get the necessary pressure on the screw to keep it from stripping out the head.  I wound up using my more expensive but shorter (3″) screws that came with a custom star bit that is very resistant to stripping.

Once I got the wood attached I assembled my pipe sections together to create a very large and heavy L.  I used just grip power to tighten the pipes into the couplers at first and then grabbed my slip joint pliers to try to tighten them further.  The one pliers was a bit small for the job though so it didn’t help all that much.

I then drug the width portion of the L to the center point of the shed so I could determine where I needed to dig my approximately 4 foot deep hole.  After standing back and eyeballing I was centered on the wood, (a plum line would have been better) I started digging with the post hole digger.

When I hit about two feet of depth I started pulling out very wet sand.  When I plopped the sand on the ground it almost looked like I was building a haphazard sand castle.  As I continued the sand turned into pure slop and the hole began filling with water. Damn it.

I hadn’t give any consideration to the difficulty in digging a 4 foot dry hole during Florida wet season.  I quickly realized I was pretty much f’d unless we would get a dry spell of at least a week or so which would allow the ground water level to drop.  The likelihood of this happening before October is not good.

I was very discouraged by my sloppy hole.  Later on Tuesday I took the L apart and stored the pipe in the shed for it’s eventual installation whenever that may be.

On Monday, until the high bar installation cancellation I was feeling pretty good about things.  I had gotten a lot of stuff accomplished. On Tuesday I felt the opposite.

I woke up super early when Ali was getting up to go swim.  I thought I would get some quality WoW time in since scheduled Tuesday maintenance didn’t start until  8 AM.  I was annoyed to see that I picked a Tuesday when Blizzard decided to start their server maintenance at 4AM so no WoW.

I instead turned my attention to the great Iphone game I found last week Tower Defense: Lost Earth.  I am now deep into the maps with only 4 or 5 yet to clear.  I had been stuck on a level called “Vulcan”.  Well after at least 20 attempts I am still stuck on this level.  It is just impossibly hard, even on the default “EASY” level.  There are 66 waves of bad guys.  I think the farthest I made it was wave 62.  The screen is literally just jammed with enemy units.  It seems no matter how many or how powerful my towers are I am unable to survive the onslaught.

Being stuck on this level for so long has revealed one flaw in the game, no intermediate saves.  With levels as big as Vulcan it would be a good thing to be able to save your progress mid-wave so if you die, you don’t have to start back at the very beginning.  Unfortunately no such mechanic exists so each time I failed I had to start back at damn wave 1.  I STILL have not gotten past this level and to be honest I am not quite sure what strategy to use to do so at this point.

Once the sun came up I thought I would do some work on the super screw pool cage replacement project.  I have had my bag of screws sitting around for a couple months unused.  This project immediately lead to frustration.  The bag of screws I bought were 1 inch #10 screws.  Well a pool cage is held together by a number of different size screws.  The screws I bought only fit in a few spots.

So I walked around the cage looking for rusty screw heads that were the same size as what I had.  One of the spots that appeared to have similar screws were the junction points in the pool cage gutter.  These intersections had a number of screws in them, 10-12 per intersection.

Some of the screws were rusty so I decided I would super screw all of them.  As I removed the old screws the hole would immediately start draining water from the gutters.  As I inserted the super screw replacement I noticed that I still was getting some dripping.  I figured it was temporary until I had all the screws replaced.  Well it never stopped.  Now both of these joints have a steady drip of gutter water coming down.  I was annoyed.  I now have plans to reinstall the old rusty screws that don’t leak.

In total I might have replaced 30-35 screws.  Only 500 or so to go. Ugh.

The next item was to finish up the mowing.  Ali had mowed the front of the property and a good portion of the back half of the fenced area.  The rest of the grass was littered with items from the pool deck so she couldn’t do it.  I spent probably close to 90 minutes finishing up the work.  It was good to get the back mowed since once we develop full time standing water the job becomes nearly impossible.

I also installed a new pest guard over the dryer vent.  The piece of plastic grid that was jammed into the vent previously was constantly getting clogged.  The new guard mounts on top of the vent and is much larger.  Hopefully it offers adequate protection while having to be cleaned much less often.

Besides a quick Dunkin Donuts coffee run with the dogs I spent the rest of my last day off at home and spent a good portion of it just screwing around either playing WoW or Tower Defense.

Late in the day I decided to make an attempt at this month’s Bar-barian challenge, a 75 second routine on the parallel bars.  I had put off doing this because I knew I would struggle with it.  Despite building my own parallel bars a few months ago, I am far from adept to doing much of anything on them besides dips and pull ups.  My attempts were comically bad, no one will ever confuse me with Bart Connor.

So I ended my 4 days off feeling like I accomplished some things but that so many other things yet needed to be done, argh.

I received a very annoying email from Netflix last night announcing yet another price increase.  Netflix just increased their prices 8 months ago.  Well this isn’t a price increase, this is bending you over.  In a nutshell they are breaking their DVD and streaming parts of the business apart.  If you want one or the other you pay $8.  If you want both streaming and the option for DVD’s like most Netflix people do, they are going to essentially DOUBLE your rate to $16 a month.  That my friends is f’ing ridiculous.

No, an additional $8 a month isn’t going to break my back but the concept of a company doubling their rate in one fell swoop really pisses me off.  It was classic bait and switch.  Pull in hordes of people by offering a good value and then pull the rug out from under them once they are hooked in.

Now I am not naive, I know what is driving this, streaming rights cost.  A number of Netflix streaming agreements are due to expire in the not so distant future.  Supposedly renewing these deals is going to cost a TON more as there is much more demand for streaming content from multiple providers (Hulu, Amazon, Red Box, etc…)  Evidently Netflix is trying to soften that blow by jacking the rates on their subscribers astronomically.

My preference would be to just do everything streaming.  The issue is Netlfix has limited streaming content, in fact they have been LOSING streaming content from the site, things like Dexter can no longer be streamed.  The only way you can get to see a lot of titles is via old shitty DVD’s.  Netflix knows this of course and is counting on it.

It will be interesting to see if this strategy blows up in their face in the form of a mass exodus of angry customers that don’t enjoy getting f’d.  I know the initial customer reaction to the news has been VERY negative.

I picked up myself a tube of Lotrimin AF today.  I have self diagnosed myself with a case of recurring jock itch that has been coming and going for awhile.  For whatever reason I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Once in a while I would get itchy down there and then it would go away the next day.

Well last night I saw a defined rash on the top of my inner thigh which motivated the purchase.  It was a bit embarrassing as I pushed the box over the counter at Walgreen’s to the attractive female clerk.  The artwork on the box shows a glowing crotch image on the front to illustrate the area it is used for.  I quickly paid for it without making eye contact.

I read yesterday a fan at a Ranger’s game died when he leaned far over a railing in the outfield reaching for a ball and subsequently fell onto concrete 20 feet below.  Typically a 20 foot fall is not going to kill you unless you happen to land at a very bad angle which he must have.

Today I saw a press conference with Nolan Ryan of all people.  Evidently he is now in management for the Rangers.  Let me quickly say that he looks AWFUL.  He is fat, bald and looks like he is 85 (he is 64).  Anyway the Rangers said they were FULLY INVESTIGATING the incident.

I don’t really understand what there is to investigate.  The guy took a chance by leaning much further than he safely should have in his zest to obtain a baseball, it was dumb.  Unfortunately in this case his poor judgement killed him.  I can only hope this does not cause some overblown reaction where they are going to put up 8 foot plexiglass walls or perhaps nets to catch those with poor balance, you know like they do at the Chinese sweat shops to discourage suicide attempts?

You can’t protect against stupidity.  Stupidity is a natural event that in some cases leads to the death of the individual practicing the stupid behavior.  I feel similar about other laws in place that try to police against stupidity like seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws.  Hey if you take your safety so lightly that you don’t want to wear a seat belt or a helmet that is just fine with me.  Just don’t expect me to have huge remorse when that decision costs you dearly at some future date and time. I am more interested in laws that protect me if your stupid behavior affects others.

I neglected to give a shout out to my bud Jeremy, the inspiration for my world famous Jmo cartoon series, on his official commissioning into the US Naval Reserve.  To be inspired enough to want to serve in the military, even on a part time basis, at this point in his life is worthy of respect and admiration.  Hat’s off to him.

So yesterday the headline hits that in an effort to address the debt ceiling issue that will strike in August, Obama hinted he would be open to talking about cutting things like social security benefits.  This was like blood in the water.  I quickly received emails from Moveon.org and DCCC denouncing the idea.  I quickly added my name to the virtual petition against it.

Ever since the last election where the Republicans regained control of the house through their tireless smear and disinformation efforts Obama has been trying to “compromise” on legislative differences to appease those on the right.  I guess he was trying to show he is willing to attempt to bridge the political chasm between the two parties.  Well I have a simple message for him, knock it the f off.

First Obama caved on letting the Bush tax breaks for the rich expire as scheduled.  It was due to the SCREAMING by Republicans that Obama was RAISING taxes on the American people.  In reality he would have been simply letting what was originally pitched as a short term fix for the post 9/11 downturn expire as they should have. The expiration was restoring the tax rate to the Clinton level era (very prosperous by anyone’s account)  on the American RICH people ($250,000 or more annual income) whom a tax increase would be a small annoyance but far from catastrophic to their bulging pocket books.

Obama caved again during the last budget showdown a couple months ago.  When “compromise” really meant yielding to the Republicans whom threatened to take their ball and go home if Obama/Democrats did not agree to their compromises which focused on cutting infrastructure, education and benefit programs instead of once again targetting the rich whom have enjoyed their lowest taxation rate of the last century for nearly a decade.

So here we are again.  The latest and greatest budget deadline and once again John Boner claiming tax increases on (rich) American people is off the table.  He is sworn to protect that ever growing massive wealth differential that exists in this country no matter what.  Who gives a F if history proves that a strong middle class is the key to economic viability?  As long as Boner and his cronies are getting kickbacks from the lobbyists and the billions they represent, he will do just as he is told.

So the news that Obama is considering another “compromise” this time putting social security benefits on the table as a gambling chip is just another example of caving in.  Obama needs to grow a set and stop being manipulated.

Now I know he is in a difficult position.  He has to roll the dice.  What looks worse, allowing himself to be pushed around by republicans serving their ultra-wealthy backers, or facing the possibility of a government shutdown by saying “Enough is enough, I am not taking this shit anymore”  I would favor the latter, call their bluff.  If Obama actually would allow republicans to gouge benefits for our senior citizens as a tool to “balance” the budget he would severely erode his already fading support. Stop the madness.

Speaking of cracking under pressure, I plan to be applying a lot of pressure this weekend, as in pressure washer.  I have a couple extra vacation days to use.  I am going to use some of them on Monday and Tuesday.  The main project focus for the 4 day period will be pressure washing, lots of pressure washing.  The pool cage/deck and both sheds are in dire need of descuzzifying.

I think running is still off the menu but biking and swimming will be mixed in there I am sure.  Oh yea, the dogs stink and need a bath. They will be so happy when I carry them to the tub, not.

When I was up in PA, Todd asked me if I wanted his old Sony laptop.  He was letting my niece use it as a glorified toy for awhile but the LCD went out. He had since bought a cheap netbook that she uses so he had no use for the close to 10 year old Sony.  I threw it in my luggage and lugged it back here.

When I turned the laptop on it appeared that the LCD back light was dead. When I saw online I could get a new back light for only $15 I took a leap and bought it.  It would be an interesting little project.  I never replaced a back light before.

Well I performed the repair yesterday, sort of.  It was a huge pain in the ass.  My desk was covered in dozens of tiny little screws, many of which did not find their way back into the computer when it was reassembled. As I said I never replaced any LCD parts before so I just kept taking stuff apart until I found it.

The light is soldered to the power connector.  The old light had very delicate solder work.  I am more of a blunt force guy when it comes to soldering.  I got the wires connected to the new light and wrapped the joint in electrical tape as opposed to the rubber boot that covered the original joint.

Putting the screen back together was a mess.  Because my solder work was not nearly as clean as the original I had issues getting stuff to fit back together.  I managed to slice my thumb on a piece of razor sharp metal.  I was really surprised how much the slice hurt.  It started to bleed pretty quickly.

After applying a band-aid I was sick of this project.  I was spending all this time and frustration trying to get a laptop working that is pretty worthless.  It is a P4 with only 256 megs of RAM. I half assed got the screen back in place, fully expecting that when I tested the repair it wouldn’t work anyway.

I was surprised that the screen actually lit up.  My shoddy repair was evident by the dimness in the upper right quadrant of the screen but it was at least usable.  The semi-successful repair means that instead of heading to the recycle center the laptop will get a fresh copy of XP thrown on it and will be kept as a “guest” computer at the house.  It will still surf the web, slowly.

Ever since playing in the Rumble I have been not feeling great physically.  My right knee still has some minor swelling as we approach two weeks after the event.  My elbows and shoulders have not been feeling very happy at the gym since my return either.

I am hoping I can shake these aches and pains and get back into the groove I was in leading up to the Rumble.

During recent election cycles I have ranted about the lunacy of robocalls from candidates.  I expressed how disturbing me at home with a recorded message from a candidate was a sure way to do nothing but create ill will towards the candidate.

Well being the great innovator that he is, our 29% approval rated governor Rick Scott, has taken up using robocalls as a tool to annoy citizens outside of the election cycle as well. Twice in the past couple months I have received robocalls from our visibly disturbing governor to “report” on the progress he is making.

I was thrilled to hear that not only did he manage to cut my pay by 3%, he has been able to offer numerous corporate kick backs by cutting things like education funding and Medicaid.  Atta boy Rick, your approval rating will be in the teens in no time!

Those of you that love Iphone tower defense games NEED to download TowerDefense Lost Earth right now.  It’s is the best 99 cent game I ever played.

I didn’t get to the gym yesterday but I felt spent anyway.  I was sleepy, lethargic and hungry.  I can only hope it was a side effect of the bust ass weekend that included crazy early wake up times.

Earlier in the day I had been working a Craigslist deal for a replacement cable modem.  There was some woman in Bonita Springs selling a refurbished Linksys cable modem.  I emailed her my phone number on Sunday night and told her I was interested and she should call me.

Well she called this morning when I wasn’t in front of my cell phone and left a message.  I called back a half hour later and got her voicemail so I left her a message to call me back so we could arrange to meet.

Mid-afternoon came and I had not received a call back.  In addition I tried calling her number a few more times and again got voicemail.  When 5pm came I had written her off as a dead deal.  Life in Craigslist transaction world moves at breakneck speed, I was done waiting for her.

Instead I just grabbed a modem at Target on the way home.  I was stopping there anyway to get a cheap, wired bike computer for Ali to use on the trainer.  The cheap wireless computer we already had has a VERY short range.  It will only pick up signal from the front wheel, if you move the sensor to the back it won’t work. With the wired version I was able to mount the sensor on the back wheel so Ali can get speed and distance info as she pedaling away in place.

I then swapped out my new cable modem with the loaner I received from the tech.  Getting the modem activated had a very surprising result, a pleasant experience with a Comcast representative.

After getting my new modem commissioned on their network the woman mentioned she saw I was on a promotional plan for my internet service for $34.95.  I was on the “standard” speed plan.  My promo rate was scheduled to expire in September.

She said she could put me on a different promo that would be good for 6 months for only $29.99 a month and it would be their much faster 20mb service. Wow, sounds great, sign me up.  I was somewhat shocked that this woman actually went out of her way to give me something I didn’t ask for.  Hopefully more employees in the Comcast blob take notes.

The internet was jammed with negative reaction to the Casey Anthony trial yesterday where she was found not guilty of killing her daughter.  The outcry was because of some of the details of the case, many of which seem beyond damning evidence of the mother’s guilt.  I haven’t followed the case at all beyond what I have heard others say about it.  It seems like almost an OJ level of controversy.

Since the verdict I have read stories on both sides of the fence.  It seems that the impartial viewpoint is that Casey is guilty of being a piece of shit that will burn in hell if there was one, but the evidence was not concrete enough to convict her of killing the kid. Of course that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.

So on Friday afternoon I noticed that I was no longer able to pull mail from my home server.  I figured the power was out, it happens quite a bit during the summer time in our area.  When I got home I took a peek at the cable modem and saw the online light was not on, meaning I was still offline, shit.

I did the normal unplug and replug trick that rarely works on the cable modem to no avail. Well I figured there must be some sort of local outage so I grabbed my cell phone to call the bastards at Comcast.  The woman I got on the phone had me disconnect and reconnect the coax line in addition to a power reset.  I was still out of luck. The woman then started in about how something may have became “loose” or possibly something chewed through a wire.  I told her that it is odd that something would become loose all by itself in the middle of the afternoon and I assured her we didn’t have rats in the attic chewing on wires.

The woman said she would have to schedule a tech to come out.  I was surprised by this as I assumed multiple homes in our area were down.  She said there was no widespread outage.  Ok so as I waited for her to figure out the tech schedule I was already running my Saturday through my head, trying to figure out when would be the best time to have a tech arrive.

When the woman said the soonest someone could come out was MONDAY I was flabbergasted.  “You are joking, right?” I said in disbelief.  The prospect of a long holiday weekend without internet service was not something I was very interested in.  Besides the recreational use, I needed internet access to process online registrations for the race we were timing on the 4th of July, f me.

I expressed my displeasure with the very slow turn around for a tech visit.  Monday seemed outrageous, Comcast techs work Saturdays and Sundays.  The woman assured me that was the earliest it could be addressed.  I hung up quite annoyed.

So now I had to come up with some way to get down the race entries.  Luckily I had one jailbroken Iphone in my pocket to save the day.  I had several ideas about how I could get internet access to the house.  One of which was to set up the Iphone as a local wifi hotspot and pump everything through it.  The problem was I didn’t have a wifi adapter for our desktop pc’s.  Later that night I made a run out to Target to grab a USB wifi stick.

With that stick in my PC I was able to pull down my race entries although the connection was VERY buggy and would drop out quite often.  My original plan of getting the entire network on via wireless was unsuccessful.  It was after midnight until I got to bed.  I was up that late just trying various configurations to minimize the impact of three unplugged days. I went to bed frustrated.

When I got up early Saturday I did some more messing around with my connection through my Iphone.  I found out that mostly just web traffic works in this method.  I was unable to ftp, rdp or do anything fun like play WoW via this connection.  Ali was out early doing a long run.  Since I had no electronic entertainment available I got busy outside.

We had rain almost every day of the past week, enough that we already have standing water on the property.  It also caused the grass to grow at jungle-like rates.  After weeding the property I grabbed the weed whacker and whacked away.  I discovered that my 8 year old waterproof boots aren’t so waterproof anymore as I sloshed through wet spots in the yard.  By the time I was done weed whacking I had a layer of green scuzz coating the lower half of my body from the wet grass.

I also wanted to do some more troubleshooting on my cable modem.  I figured if I hook it out at the pole that feeds our house it would eliminate the inside wiring as a problem.  Even though it was drizzling outside it didn’t stop me.  I ran an extension cord out to the pole and connected the modem directly to the line feed.  It was still dead, damn.  It didn’t do anything to help me get internet service restored any faster but at least when a tech came I could save him some troubleshooting steps.

My internet outage had other side effects, some expected, some unexpected.  Of course things like our Vonage service, streaming tv, my Sony Dash, 360 etc were all pretty useless without internet.  The one thing I did not expect to be affected was my Tivo Premiere.

Years ago Tivo’s gained the ability to pull their program data down via the internet, freeing them from using something as low tech as a phone connection.  When a Tivo pulls down data it typically grabs at least 2 weeks worth, so if you lost internet you wouldn’t be able to pull down an updated programming schedule but the box would continue to function normally otherwise.  Well that was the case for every model up until the latest and greatest, the Tivo Premiere.

Ali and I had planned to sit down and watch some of the shows we had recorded while we ate a meal.  When I turned on the TV I saw a message on the Tivo screen that internet access was not available (no duh) and that some features would not be available until it was restored.  Ok no big deal, I just want to watch stuff that is already recorded and sitting on the box.  But, I can’t.

Whenever I tried to navigate the menu tree I would get stuck in a loop and none of my shows were there.  I figured it must be some weird fluke since it lost internet access while the box was up so I restarted the Tivo.  Imagine my pleasure when after the 10 minute boot up process I was greeted with the same lack of functionality.

I was beyond annoyed.  Surely there has to be some sort of thing I am missing. So I call up Tivo support so they can tell me how to view the shows that are on the box.  I get a woman and describe the problem.  She almost sheepishly admits that that is how the Premeire currently works.  If you have no internet connection, NOTHING WORKS.  WTF? That is idiotic?  I questioned the woman about why in the world would it be designed to lock you out of your recorded content without an internet connection.  She had no good explanation and could only offer up that there is a new system update in the works that may change that behavior.

I knew bitching at this woman would accomplish nothing.  I hung up dumbfounded at the stupidity of this set up.  I later discovered that using my Tivo HD, which is not castrated by the lack of a net connection, I could transfer content from the Premiere back to the bedroom to watch it there.

Tivo is already on somewhat thin ice with me as far as the viability of their service.  The one advantage they have is the content lives locally on my box so I can do with it as I please.  To kill that feature if no internet connection exists is just another stone in the cart against the service.

Since I didn’t initially think of the bedroom Tivo option we watched a Netflix dvd I had sitting around for a week or two, The Fighter.  I recalled the film getting good reviews and it has a strong cast including Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale.  I was instantly impressed with Christian’s transformation.  Gone was his beefy Batman body.  He emaciated himself to play the role of  a strung out brother on crack.  On top of that he was able to throw out an incredibly good Boston area accent, especially when you consider he is from Australia or New Zealand, some place like that.  He did a FANTASTIC job portraying the role.

The movie had a Rocky-esque plot which is always a plus.  Even Ali, who was initially negative on viewing the film said it was good.  It really was well done.  It gets a solid A from me.

On Saturday Ali accompanied me to Home Depot to pick up some mulch.  The landscaped areas on our property needed it badly.  When mulch reaches a certain age it breaks down to a level where weeds treat it just like dirt and grow abundantly in it.  So at least once a year we dump down a thick new layer of mulch to retard the weed process.

Having Ali with expedites the mulch loading process.  She gets in the bed of the truck and I hand the bags up for her to stack and arrange.  I know from past experience that I can get roughly 30 bags of mulch in the truck before I risk bag spillage.  We bought the mulch but didn’t plan to actually spread it until later in the day Sunday.

We started out our Sunday with a brick at the water park.  I didn’t want to do any running yet as my right knee was still somewhat swollen from my Rumble appearance.  So we just did a bike/swim brick.  Ali said her legs were tired from the long run Saturday so she wanted to just ride her bike around the park while I hit the road with mine.

This was the first time I did a decent ride with my new slick red striped tires.  The ride went well, I averaged my best average pace ever for the Livingston Road course, a solid 19mph.  I also covered the roughly 12.25 miles in 38 minutes and change, again another best.  Doing all of this on my $300 Dawes is more satisfying for some reason.  Just imagine when I get my next bike how fast I will feel considering the all aluminum Dawes checks in at 27 or 28 pounds.

I put in 1200 meters in the pool at a decent sub 9 minute per 400 clip.  Ali swam almost double that distance.

Ali was lucky to avoid my wrath when she pulled a boner.  I gave her the key fob for the Camry before I went on my ride.  She had no pockets on her so she thought she would just stuff it in her bathing suit, surely she will remember to take it out before she starts swimming.  Well of course she didn’t.

After several laps in the pool she realized she still had the key on her and jumped out.  When she told me I shook my head and kept swimming since I was mid-400.  The water helped to hide my annoyance.  Why would you put a key in your bathing suit???

So after I finished my 400 I hopped out to survey the damage.  I knew how to take the FOB apart since I have changed the batteries in it before.  When I popped it open I was very happy to see that Toyota engineered the fobs against people that decided to swim with them by protecting the electronics behind a rubber seal.  It looked like that despite several hundred yards under water the electronics were unscathed.

We both were relieved when it still worked when we went back out to the car. That relief turned into annoyance once again when we were greeted with a parking spot monger.  Despite the fact that we had to load and secure both bikes on the bike rack before leaving this dipshit decided it was worth their time to sit there and wait.

Keep in mind 50 yards away were open parking spots which they could have parked and been inside the water park by the time they were done waiting for us.  F’in idiots.  I made absolutely zero effort to make haste in my departure.  I hate lazy people.  Get out and walk.

So Sunday afternoon we needed to spread the mulch we bought the day before.  Again this job is best done by two people.  I would be the bag lugger, ripper and dumper.  Ali was the spreader.  30 bags of mulch only made a dent in what had to be done.  We got the pond and a little over half of the orchard done.

The grass still needed to be mowed so I told Ali she could hop on the tractor and I would go get another load of mulch myself.  Loading up myself was a pain in the ass but it isn’t like I haven’t done it before many times. One nice thing was the red mulch was actually on sale this weekend.  It was only $10 for 6 bags, a steal.

When I got back Ali was still mowing away so I did phase 2 myself again.  It was very humid and warm.  I was a sweaty, mulchy mess by the time I was done.  Unfortunately with 60 bags of mulch on the ground I still needed an estimated 20-25  bags to finish but that wasn’t going to get done on Sunday.

Ali and I were both beyond pooped Sunday night.  Knowing we had to get up at 3:45am to time the race dictated an early bedtime was in order.  I think it was lights out at 9pm.

This race is probably my least favorite to time because it is a zoo.  The race starts at 7am so there is always a lot of people that jam in late.  We had everything set up and ready to go before 6am.  Ali made a comment that it was dumb that we had to be there at 5 since no runners had shown up.  Well that was the calm before the storm.

In short order the area was deluged with runners.  Ali and in total had 160 or so entries that we put in between us.  Ali had plans to run the race with Michelle.  Unfortunately one of the local school cross country teams showed up very late and dumped 20 poorly legible entries on my lap to go along with the already sizeable pile I was working through.

At first Ali said she would just not run the race and help me.  I knew she wanted to run with Michelle so I told her I would handle it.  I had to scurry to the start line to start the race as they were calling my name.  After the start I had to run to the finish line to start the timing equipment and continue putting in entries.  I actually was still doing data entry while the first few runners crossed the finish line. Yea it was pretty hectic.

There was a photographer there from the local paper.  She snapped a pic of Ali and I during the entry process.

Anyway, the race timing went well.  There were the few unavoidable screw ups that we have to sort out every race due either to runner or volunteer error.  We used to rant and rave about the screw ups a lot more than we do now.  There is just no way to avoid them as far as I can determine.

We got out of there about 8:30.  We were invited to a post race pancake breakfast but I had to get home for my Comcast appointment.  They set a window of between 10-1.

Instead of her customary post race nap, Ali had to take a shower and go into work.  I kept myself busy doing post race processing, at least the part I could do without a broadband connection.  I held out hope that the Comcast guy would surprise me and show up bright and early right at 10am.  Of course that didn’t happen.

The tech rolled up during the last portion of the window, around 12:30.  I gave him a quick rundown of what happened and what I tried.  He verified I had no signal inside the house.  He then went out to the pole and said no signal was present there either.  I told him that there was a filter on my line to block the cable tv signal and perhaps that filter was bad.  He pulled out his ladder and went up to take a look.

When he came back down he showed me old filter and coax connector.  You could see there was an electrical burn on the center conductor, evidently the line got hit by a surge.  After replacing the filter and the connector at the pole I checked inside and saw the modem was still offline.  Evidently the surge also zapped something in the modem as after putting another modem in place the circuit came up.

The modem I had in place was one Jeremy gave me awhile back.  I was using it to avoid the stupid never ending rental fees Comcast charges you if you use one of their modems.  The tech said I could just get my own modem again and swap it out with the Comcast owned modem.  Of course I will do that.  I can’t stand the idea of giving Comcast a penny more than necessary.

Originally I had plans to bitch at the tech about the ridiculously long 3 day repair time for the service.  Once he arrived I reconsidered.  I realized he is just doing his job, the lack of staffing and our repair priority involves people far above him in the food chain. Hey at least I was back online.

I finished up the race processing items I was unable to update via Iphone.  I then was debating if I wanted to go get the final load of mulch to finsih up the project.  Part of me was sick of doing work, it felt like I was working most of the weekend already.  But of course the goal completion maniac in me won out, I loaded the dogs up in the truck and we got the last load.

When I got back I had to scramble to get it all dumped and spread before a storm blasted in.  I made it inside a few minutes before the skies opened up once again, refreshing our various water holes in the yard. The one good thing about the standing water is when we have ducks visit.  Twice over the weekend I saw them swimming around in the front drainage ditches.

As I was working over the weekend I saw a funny site buzz down our road.  First there was an ATV that flew by.  They had to be going at least 50-60mph on the 30 mph speed limit road.  The ATV was followed by 3 police vehicles going even faster.  I assume they were chasing the ATV guy.   When I stuck my head out to look where they went all of the vehicles were already out of sight.  Hope they caught him.

Ali and I had made no special plans to watch fireworks.  We both were too consumed with other things to even discuss it.  In a small effort to celebrate the holiday I made burgers on the grill for myself and the dogs which we complemented with baked beans.  I did hear and see the glow of some fireworks off in the distance later that night. That was good enough for this year.

I have had a couple routine upkeep things on the back burner for a bit, waiting for the time and motivation to do them.  One of those was to run the rug cleaner in the house.  I always say that I would like to do it more often but I never seem to be able to increase the frequency.  In fact I am not sure if I have done it in 2011 yet.

One of the reasons that it doesn’t get run more often is it is generally a pain in the ass. That is also the reason that as far as I can recall, Alison has NEVER run the carpet cleaner.  Pushing it back and forth several hundred times always results in a burning right shoulder by the end of the process. It’s heavier than a normal vacuum cleaner.

The process is also kind of gross, especially when you have two black dogs that shed.  I have to stop on a routine basis to pick up globs of black hair that get barfed out of the cleaner.  Cleaning up the unit after I am done is not much fun either.  The other annoying aspect is the new cleaner we bought a couple years ago is narrower and has a smaller water tank meaning more back and forth passes to cover the same area and more frequent water/solution fill ups.

However, it is generally my responsibility to do the least fun jobs in the house so I went at it.  Usually I will run the Dyson first before running the carpet cleaner to cut down on the hair.  Since the Roombas just ran prior to my getting home I didn’t bother.  While that decision saved me some time by avoiding covering the same areas twice, it also resulted in even more wet clumps of black hair than normal getting sucked out of the carpet.

It took me close to an hour to complete the chore.  As always I was amazed at just how dirty the water I was dumping down the sink had become.  Yes, I still would like to do it more often, or maybe, gasp, have Ali and I switch off in the project.

Yesterday my new 360 arrived from Amazon, just a couple days after I fixed my old 360. (yes my repair is still holding up)  I unpacked it and checked out the unit.  I noticed that there was no external connector to snap on a hard drive.  I had visions of just using the 60 gig HDD from the old 360 on the new one.  Evidently they are not compatible, sort of.

The 360 S is TOTALLY different than the older models, the most noticeable difference is the greatly compacted size of the unit.  I am not sure why I would even have thought the old hdd’s would snap right on.  Instead of snapping the hard drive on the outside of the unit, you actually insert the hard drive internally into the unit.  This is a good indicator of just how cleaned up the console is. Not only is it smaller, it even has room to stick a HDD inside despite it’s compact dimensions.

So anyway I immediately did some investigations on my hard drive options.  A peek inside the unit revealed there is a plain old SATA connector in there that is sized for a 2.5″ drive.  If you buy an “official” drive for the unit it comes in a plastic shell that will align the drive with the connector and keep it firmly in place. However you don’t HAVE to go that route.

You can actually just insert a bare drive in there.  Sure it won’t be as secure but it will stay in place as long as you don’t drop kick your 360.  If you use the bare drive method you can just remove your old 360 drive from it’s shell and jam it into the new 360.  I opted to not do that however.

The main reason I was concerned about adding a hard drive was I heard somewhere it was required for streaming video.  The 4GB of internal flash memory doesn’t leave much room to spare. However in my tests of streaming from Hulu, Netflix, ESPN and Playon all seemed to work just fine.  I’ll still probably throw a hard drive in it as eventually I will need the space if I download some of the online games for the 360.

Even though I have an available CAT 5 cable for the 360, I opted to just use the internal wireless N adapter (something else new with the 360S)  The performance seemed just fine going sans wire.

So I have the brand new Kinect hardware in the box yet.  I plan on seeing what the going rate for it is on Ebay/CL and act accordingly.

This 4th of July weekend should be busy since I wasn’t around last weekend.  The grass is a thick mess since we have been getting deluged with rain the past two weeks.  I also would like to tackle another one of those routine but pain the ass chores, reapplying mulch to the landscaped areas.  That job is majorly not fun.

We also have the normally massive and hectic 4th of July run to time.  Last year we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 people sign up.

I’d like to jam in a bike ride and some swim time over the weekend as well. My right knee is still somewhat swollen so running is off the current cardio menu.  I may even relax a little bit, who knows?