Archives September 2011

So I left work yesterday afternoon to go pick up Ali from the airport.  On the way I stopped at the house to pick up the girls in the party van.  As we approached Ali, who was standing by the curb both dogs were on the front seat with their heads out the window, it was cute.  Sadie wasted no time getting reacquainted with Ali’s lap on the way home.

It’s hard to believe but my home computer migration is pretty much done already.  Last night I completed it by reinstalling Sharepoint Designer 2007 on the new system. (which is now a free download from Microsoft by the way) It was the smoothest migration I can recall.  Ali was quite impressed with how quiet the new system is.

While Ali was away I drove the Camry Hybrid most of the time.  I rarely get to drive the car normally.  Well I noticed that the front brake pads are starting to squeak, a normal sign that the pads are nearing the end of their life.

I have done a decent amount of automotive maintenance in my lifetime but one thing I never attempted was brake work.  I suppose I deemed the ability to stop a car as something too important to be left in the hands of amateurs.  However that is about to change.  I did some research in what is involved in changing the disc brake pads on the Camry and it doesn’t appear to be difficult at all, basically 2 or 3 bolts hold on the brake calipers.

I hopped on the same website that I bought the Tacoma door lever bezel on and bought a set of long wear pads for $40 plus shipping.  I am anxious to see how my first brake job works out. A successful replacement would equate to at least a $100-$150 savings over what a garage/dealer would charge me.

I lost my fantasy football game this week by 5 points.  The big scapegoats are Desean Jackson and the Ravens defense.  After crushing the Steelers the week before the Ravens D turned into a bunch of pussies this week, only grabbing me a measly 5 points.  Jackson, who I had on my team last year has a very annoying pattern of inconsistency.  He will have a monster game and then basically disappear for a game or two.

So now Obama is making big headlines by proclaiming once again he is targeting the ultra-rich and the loopholes they have enjoyed since the Bush Tax Cuts were implemented in 2002.  To be honest, even though I strongly support the Bush cuts being rolled back yesterday, the statement by Obama rings a bit hollow with me.

When he campaigned in 2008 one of the things he guaranteed was the end of the Bush Tax Cuts. It didn’t happen.  Instead he offered them up as a sacrificial lamb of appeasement to the right in an unappreciated act of bipartisanship.  This pattern of appeasement has been seen repeatedly and repeatedly it has resulted in nothing positive, unless you are one of the corporations enjoying record profit taking.

Trying to trot out this promise with renewed vigor just doesn’t hold water for me.  I am much more impressed by action.  Unfortunately his window to show me any appreciable change closed once the Tea Party loonies got a foothold in congress.

My Saturday got off to a 4am start since I had to time another race.  This was going to more of a challenge than normal since I would be doing all timing related duties myself instead of having my faithful sidekick Ali helping out.  This was a new race, held at a local hospital.  The venue was really nice with ample parking and full access to the building lobby for bathroom facilities.

Luckily for me the race wasn’t huge in terms of numbers.  Even with the 35-40 walk up entries we only had a total of around 225 runners.  Even so I was quite busy, especially because I once again brought the additional timing equipment to do a chip start.  I was quite eager to atone for the failed chip start from the last race.

I ran out to the start line with about 10 minutes to go to start time and hurriedly got the box set up.  Initially I had a few issues getting connected to the box but it seemed to just be because the Elite box takes considerably longer to boot up and connect to the network than our STK Lite unit.  It was actually a decent race to use the chip start since the road the race started on was narrow, we had people 100 feet or more back from the start line.

I actually only had one of the two mats up and running since the one receiver card was sent out to Ipico for repair.  One mat was enough apparently as I successfully captured the runner start times. I was happy.

In general I was really happy with the way the race turned out.  Like I said it was a nice venue, the timing went smoothly and they had a nice spread of post race refreshments, enough for double the amount of people.  I was proud to have handled it alone as well.

Once I got home and finished up the post race work I immediately dove into chores, fully intending to get everything done.  Doing the manual labor was made more difficult by a right shoulder that was KILLING me.  Any motion that involved the right arm radiated pain from my shoulder.  Great, not only do I have a right knee that is not getting better, now my shoulder is f’d up. I tried to compensate by using my left arm wherever possible, even in tasks where it was awkward to do so.

I headed into the bathroom and buzzed my hair.  Despite my threats to bore everyone by taping the session I decided against it.  It turned out pretty well although I noticed a few stray hairs I might need Ali to attend to.

I worked relentlessly and got both the inside and outside work done by around 3.  I then headed out with the girls in the party van for some errands, they love errands.  One of those stops was at Best Buy.  The intention was to look at CPU fans.  I recently had replaced two fans in my 5 year old computer in an attempt to eliminate some annoying noises.  I was successful in quieting most of them but there was still an intermittent high pitched sound that drives Ali crazy.

So the CPU cooler Best Buy sells was something like $70 bucks. It was a big, gawdy thing.  I started running scenarios through my head.  I had no guarantee that the CPU fan was the source of the noise.  If I replaced the thing and the noise still lived, I was going to be majorly annoyed.

Just for the hell of it I started walking down the aisle where new systems are located.  I spotted an Lenovo mini-tower on sale.  As I examined the specs it seemed decent with 6 gigs of RAM and a 1TB HDD.  I took a picture of the snap tag and was redirected to the Best Buy site.  The customer reviews for the system were overwhelmingly positive, describing the system as a good value for the money.

The system utilizes a Pentium 620 processor which is low on the totem pole as far as CPU power nowadays but still a nice upgrade from my aging, power hungry, hot as an oven Pentium D system.  I justified the purchase as something Ali would endorse since it would eliminate the noise problem once and for all.  I justified it to myself by noting that for the last 15 years I regularly would replace my computer every 12-18 months.  I was now around 60 months, it was time.

The one upgrade I did have to address on the system was the built in graphics which are not up to snuff.  I picked out a Nvidia 545 card with 1.5gb of memory to handle my gaming needs on the system. I rung up my purchase and happily carried my system out of the store.  I was pretty excited to update my home system since it has been so long since I built my current full size tower.

When I got home I immediately noticed something in front of the left fence line.  A closer look revealed it was a turtle. I wasn’t sure what direction he wandered in from or where he was hoping to go.  All I knew is I didn’t want to see him wind up as turtle road kill, something I see far too often in this shitty, thoughtless driver infested area.

As I picked him up he hissed a little bit but then settled down.  He actually had his head poking out a bit as we walked to the far back of the property.  I sat him down by one of the fill pits that transforms into a pond during rainy season, figuring he may enjoy it back there.  He was several hundred yards away from any roadways at least.

Now of course I had a shitload of work to do when it came to migrating my old computer to my new computer.  My plan had multiple stages.  First I pulled the internal 2TB hdd from my old system that is used for back up and installed it in the Lenovo.  I then took my old computer into the hobby room and attached it to the network connection in there and turned it on.  My plan was to copy files from it over the network as well as using a RDP connection to it to verify/check configuration settings. I also installed the upgraded graphic card in the Lenovo while the case was apart.

So I put the new Lenovo in place.  It is a mini-tower form factor, significantly smaller than the full size tower it was replacing.  It was nice and quiet when I turned it on, I really couldn’t hear it at all, Ali will be pleased.

The first thing I needed to do was join my home domain.  This exposed the first hurdle.  The new computer came preloaded with Windows 7 Home Premium which does not support joining a domain, great.  Now Microsoft is “nice” enough to bundle in the ability to upgrade your OS to other versions on the fly.  I could upgrade to Windows Professional for $89 or to Windows Ultimate, which I was already running on the old system, for $139.  Ouch.  Well the last thing I felt like doing was spending that much money to get a version of Windows 7 up and running that work on my domain.  It could quickly turn what was intended as a bargain purchase into not much of one.

Well just for the hell of it, I thought I would try using my product key from the copy of Windows Ultimate I received for hosting that fake Windows 7 launch party.  I did not expect it to work as I recalled that the copy I had supposedly would only work/activate once.  Well imagine my surprise when the Windows Anytime Upgrade took the code.  Within about 10 minutes I was up and running with Ultimate, very sweet.

I spent a good portion of the rest of the evening starting the migration process which surprisingly wasn’t all that bad.  Since I keep most of my data in an organized manner, moving it across was pretty straight forward.  All of the software I needed to reinstall I could download from the web.  I even got WoW moved across Saturday night and was very happy to see I was holding a steady 60 FPS no matter where I was in the game.

I fell asleep quite content with my Saturday.  Topping off a solid day of getting stuff done with a new pc purchase gave me the warm and fuzzies.

Despite having more work to do on the computer swap, I hit bed early since I was getting up early to do water support for Michelle.  It was an early bedtime kind of weekend, despite being solo.  I turned off the light before 9pm on Friday night.

I had my alarm set for 5am Sunday however I woke up on my own at 4, how nice.  I figured I would get up and get ready, plus I could do some more computer migration work.  I was supposed to meet up with Michelle at 6:30.  She was actually starting her run at 4am, running around her development. She had a total of 23 miles to cover.

I got there early due to my early wake up.  I figured I would ride around the development and try to find her.  I was unsuccessful, instead I just met her at our designated spot at 6:30.  I was surprised that Michelle had already got 13 miles in and had 10 to go.

I had made some adjustments to make my role as bike support more comfortable.  I pulled the clip pedals off and threw on regular mountain bike pedals.  I also doubled up on my butt padding by wearing my spandex tri shorts under my baggy bike shorts. The two changes definitely helped.

Doing the bike support wasn’t bad at all.  Michelle had a strong run, only really slowing down the last 2-3 miles when the sun was rapidly heating things up. We finished up a little after 8:30.  Michelle thanked me for the support which I was more than happy to do, I know support really helps with runs that are that long.

I had brought stuff along to swim at the water park but I decided against it.  The park didn’t open up for over an hour and I figured I could make better use of my time working more on the computer migration. Instead I grabbed a large coffee from DD and headed home.

A friend of mine had posted a clip of the ending of the Mayweather/Ortiz fight.  It was quite the scene. By all accounts Mayweather was winning the fight easily although in the final round it was pretty apparent that although Mayweather was outpointing Ortiz, he wasn’t really hurting him.

Ortiz actually was putting Mayweather against the ropes a few times, dropping some bombs.  Well during one exchange Ortiz did an obvious, deliberate head butt, a dirty move for sure.  The ref immediately flagged Ortiz for doing so and took a point away.  Ortiz, to his credit,  knew it was shitty, hugged Mayweather and presumably apologized.

So after the ref finished the point deduction he was looking away for some reason.  I don’t know if he ever uttered the command “FIGHT” to signify the resumption of the match.  Well obviously Ortiz thought action was not resumed as he had both of his hands down by his sides as Mayweather smacks him in the face.  Ortiz is obviously surprised by this but instead of putting his hands up, he looks to the ref, I assume to say WTF?? Well Mayweather follows with another punch that lands squarely on Ortiz’s unprotected chin, knocking  him silly.  Ortiz’s hands were clearly down when both punches were delivered. Even if the punches were legal, there was no way to classify them as anything but cheap.  Obviously Ortiz thought time was still out.

So after the controversial finish we are treated to even more fireworks when Larry Merchant interviews Mayweather, asking him the obvious questions about the ending of the fight.  Well a few questions in Mayweather loses it and screams at Merchant, saying he has always been critical of Floyd and that he doesn’t know shit about boxing.   As he walks away from Larry, Merchant fires back that if he was 50 years younger (Larry is pushing 80) he would kick Mayweather’s ass.  It was GREAT.

It was the most interesting thing that I have seen come out of boxing for at least a decade if not more.  You know there HAS to be a rematch.

Despite my best intentions, I was unable to stay awake for the entire Eagles game, falling asleep for good early in the second half.  Watching a game in bed is a recipe for shuteye.  Well it appears I was lucky to miss the ending.

The Eagles had a 31-21 lead going into the 4th quarter and collapsed.  Vick left the game with a concussion in the 3rd quarter but even so, a team with a reasonably solid defense could close that game out. Instead they fell flat and lost a game by all accounts they should have won easily.

Last night during the game they flashed a stat that revealed just how bad the Eagle D was last year and possibly this year.  Last year 76% of the time an opposing offense entered the red zone, they scored a touch down.  The Eagles rated dead last in the league.  In fact, no team in over a decade has posted such a miserable defensive red zone performance.  No wonder Howdy Doody was shown the door. Last night the Eagles set the fail bar even higher, allowing the Falcons to score a TD in all FIVE of their red zone appearances, sad.

It seems the core of this problem is the round robin linebacking crew the Eagles have had the last several years.  This year the Eagles are starting a rookie at MLB, Casey Matthews.  Thus far it seems the only thing he shares with his outstanding LB brother Clay is the long hair.  Casey has been in a word, awful.

The good news I guess is it is early in the season.  Hopefully there is enough time to do something about it.

I was surprised that when I woke up on Sunday my right shoulder was dramatically better.  I hardly felt any pain at all.  It felt so good that I almost went outside and did a bar session but I reconsidered, erring on the side of caution.  The last thing I needed was to injure it again.

I wish I would have a similar miraculous recovery from my right knee issues.  I still have persistent, deep stiffness and soreness in the joint, especially when getting up from the seated position.  It seemed like even biking with Michelle aggravated the knee a bit.  I need to get this sorted out.

So today I receive an email from the president of Netflix, Reed Hastings.  The letter started off being an apology for the recent ridiculous decision to dramatically increase the price of their service essentially doubling the cost to the consumer if they want to have both DVD’s in the mail AND online streaming.   He starts off trying to explain why the change was made. Ok, that’s nice that he is at least making an effort.  However as I read further I was in disbelief.

Reed goes on to explain that Netflix is making further changes to their service, breaking the DVD part of their offering into another entity called Quickster.  Quickster is going to be a totally separate site, while the streaming part of the business will still be called Netflix.

This is an incredibly idiotic move, especially on the back of a price increase that already flushed a number of customers away.  Let me explain why.

Currently when you search for a title you will see if it is available via DVD AND via online streaming.  If it is available via streaming, there would be no reason to wait for the DVD to arrive in the mail.  Well with the new proposed arrangement you would no longer have this ability.  You could wind up renting a DVD in Quickster even though it is available via streaming from Netflix.  The two sites do not interact so the only way you can tell if this is the case is to search both sites.

So Netflix’s brilliant strategy is to RAISE prices and offer LESS convenience.  I don’t know anything about Reed Hastings but if this was his brainchild he is a dipshit, no doubt about it.

I love what Netflix offered me but these recent developments make me think more and more about going without.  I don’t enjoy dealing with stupid companies.

So once I fed the dogs I hurried out the door to get to the Ave Maria Publix, a tradition when Ali is out of town.  The reason I needed to hurry was because the store closes at 7pm. Catholic town shuts down early.  Even though students are back on campus it didn’t make a dent in the amount of people at the store.  The main lot had less than 10 cars in it.

Shopping at the Ave Maria Publix always takes some getting used to since the layout is rearranged and condensed from what I am accustomed to with our normal super sized Publix.  I went down most aisles alone, only occasionally having to pass an employee facing shelves.

At the checkout I actually had to wait in a line of one.  It wasn’t too bad though since they only had one register open and nobody even bagging.  I genuflected as I walked out of the store and said a few hail mary’s on the way home.

My buddy at work who endorsed Dexter very early on also had been encouraging me to throw Breaking Bad into my Netflix queue.  I have never been disappointed in his television recommendations in the past so I finally got around to getting my first dvd yesterday.  I threw the DVD into my Xbox before bed and started watching.  By the time I turned the Xbox off I had watched all 3 shows on the 1st DVD, it was after midnight.

The premise of the show is really different.  A chemistry teacher that had to work a second job at a carwash to get by finds out he has lung cancer.  In order to provide for his family since he won’t be around all that long he decides that he would embark on a career of cooking crystal meth, putting his chemistry knowledge to practical use.  The lead is played by the dad from Malcolm in the Middle.

It’s a great show, trust me.  You WANT to see it.

This solo weekend will be quite busy.  I have a race to time tomorrow.  Not having Ali around will put a lot more demands on me.  I am hoping the race doesn’t have a bunch of walk up entries.

When I get home I surely will want to try to knock out all available house chores before the sun goes down Saturday.  Then Sunday morning I will be up and out early providing water support for Michelle for her long, long run.

I’d like to get some time to buzz my hair as well. I may video the session, demonstrating my new and improved technique.  Having my hair high and tight will be a good thing with my skin surgery next week by my ear.

Yesterday Jeremy linked me to a picture of an elite female cross fit winner.  Where is she you ask?  On the right.  Yes, the little muscle bound asian is named Kristan Clever.  Yes, she looks like a total he.

Jeremy and I discussed Kristan and her appearance.  I think her marine haircut is the biggest obstacle in seeing her as a woman.  Well that and the huge shoulders, ripped arms and thick neck.  Still if she had a ponytail I think it would make a big difference.

All I know is she can do more pull ups than I can.

I dropped Ali off at the airport this morning.  She had a flight that would make a rooster yawn at 6:30 am.  We piled in the party van and brought the girls with.  Sadie rode shotgun on Ali’s lap the entire way.  It’s a relatively quick trip for Ali as she will be returning Monday afternoon.

So on my way home last night I stopped at Pet Supermarket to grab some dog food.  After grabbing the 3 cases of the expensive dog food as well as some bird food I made my way to the counter.  On the counter were a number of items including half a dozen cans of dog food, a large bag of dry food and a couple other things.  As I approached I asked the clerk if these were somebody’s since nobody was on the other side of the counter.  He told me the woman went out to her vehicle to grab some coupons she had.  Ok fine, I told him I would go interact with the African Grey and another parrot they had in the store.

I saw the woman had returned so I made my way up to the counter to patiently wait.  She had pushed a couple pieces of paper at the guy.  I wasn’t paying attention at first but I soon realized there was a conflict brewing.

Evidently the coupons the woman retrieved were Petco coupons, not Pet Supermarket.  Pet Supermarket actually does honor coupons from competitors for items.  One of the coupons was for a $1 off a can of the canned food she picked out.  Ok, no problem.  The other coupon was for 10% off your entire purchase.  That was a problem.

The manager explained to this woman that they honor competitor coupons for merchandise but can not honor generic catch all discounts since they are not redeemable to a manufacturer.  It made sense to me.  Well this didn’t make sense to this woman and she was bitching mightily about it. She argued that that the store should basically accept any coupon from any pet store, regardless of what it is for.

Well when she realized she wasn’t going to get her 10% spiff, she said all she was going to buy was the single can of dog food that she will get the $1 off for, leaving her other pile of shit on the counter.  I at this point had waited at least 5 minutes while this circus went on, I was annoyed.  The bitch marched out of the store with her single can of food.  I guess she showed them.  I hope that was her dinner.

Yesterday Ali texted me this picture from her parking lot at work. At first the freakout reflex kicked in.  When I saw the tan car underneath the other car it looked like our Camry at first glance.  After closer inspection I was relieved to see it wasn’t.

Evidently some old woman in her 70’s that obviously should not be behind the wheel of a car anymore smashed the gas instead of the brake and pulled a Dukes of Hazard on the other vehicle.

She was quite lucky to only smash a single vehicle.  She was even luckier she didn’t plow over a person.  I understand old people are resistant to losing their drivers license and the loss of mobility that accompanies it.  However many of these individuals are truly dangerous behind the wheel.  At a minimum, more frequent testing of their driving skills should be required once a certain age threshhold is passed.

After my post work mini-workout and dog dinner prep, I headed outside on the tractor.  We actually have had 3 or 4 rain free days which allowed the standing water on the property to dry up.  I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to mow down the high grass that was sitting underwater for a few weeks. Despite the water being gone, the ground underneath in some spots was quite squishy, resulting in some more tire spinning/mud slinging action.

Highlights from this evening may include a trip to the Ave Maria Publix and if my heart survives that I may even clean Tuki’s cage.

Ali had mentioned how it would be cool to see a Broadway show while we are in NYC.  Well I am not exactly a theater kind of guy but I am a super hero guy.  I was happy that Ali was open to seeing the Spider Man show.  After doing some research I secured us two tickets the Tuesday before we fly back home.  They weren’t cheap of course but I think it will be a great addition to the trip.

The Escape from Miami triathlon is coming up in a couple weeks.  This was the first triathlon I ever participated in last year.  Ali has been signed up to do the Olympic distance event this year.  I had not decided if I was going to do it again or not this year.

My initial reservation was because the event was brutal, particularly the run at the end back and forth over a massive, steep overpass.  Since then I have done 3 other triathlons and have done better each time so I am pretty sure the Escape wouldn’t be quite as daunting this time around.

However more recently the issue has become more of a physical one.  My right knee is really bothering me right now.  When I get up from sitting any period of time my first several steps have a pronounced limp from stiffness and soreness in the joint.  My right knee has always had soreness from running but it was typically short term and would be ok by the following day.  Well since the Central Park run that has not been the case.

After my 7 mile run on Saturday the stiffness/soreness returned and is still sticking around.  It’s bad enough that the normal Wednesday squat routine at the gym is off the table.

So anyway this knee thing helped make my decision for me regarding the Escape, I’m not going to do it.  I need to get healthy enough to pull off the Tough Mudder in December which dwarfs the Escape in terms of punishing your body.

I had ideas of maybe just tagging along to the Escape with Ali and the girls to serve as a photographer but I’m not going to do that either.  First it allows me to watch the dogs instead of bugging my mom to come out for a day. Second watching others participate in athletic events that I normally would do myself doesn’t do much for my self esteem.  It will just be a formula for frustration. I also got the sense from Ali that she would kind of be into it just being an “all girls” weekend anyway.

I made the mistake of watching some clips from the latest republican debate.  It just aggravates the hell out of me.  The only candidate I like on that side is Ron Paul.  Romney, Perry and Bachman make my skin crawl for different reasons.

Yesterday for some reason an odd event from my childhood was floating through my head.  When I was a kid I had an autograph book.  I don’t really remember the real intent of the book but in a nutshell you were supposed to get the signatures of various common everyday people like a policeman, the grocer, firefighter etc…  Well I was into completing the book with all of the signatures of the various types of people.

I had actually gotten a few of the signatures and was sort of proud of my progress.  Well my Dad one day thought he would be helpful and signed different spots in the book I was missing with fake names.  One of them he signed as John Q Public.  I recall quite vividly being very upset that he did that, forever tarnishing my autograph book, invalidating it.

Why I was thinking about this yesterday I couldn’t tell you but all I know is it is a memory that is burned into my head.  I can still exactly picture what John Q Public’s signature looked like.

Yesterday I forgot to report on how the Directv repair call went on Friday evening, maybe because it was such a simple fix.  As you may recall, I had a couple theories on why I had zero signal on my receiver.  One was it was related to the heat mark I saw on the access card.  The other was the dish was bumped out of alignment when the house was painted in March.

The first thing the tech did was go outside to check the dish.  He installed a new grounding block and fine tuned the dish alignment.  In the process he cut the end off my HDTV antenna cable, thinking it was unused.  I told him what it was and he put a new end on the cable.  His portable signal meter indicated he had good signal out at the dish. Ok so the problem lies inside.

He takes his signal meter inside and connects to the coax coming out of the wall, no signal.  Hmmmm, wtf.  The tech said he needed to get behind the tv to check the port.  I told him that before he did that, it might make more sense to go up in the attic where the cables go into splitters.

Well 5 minutes in the attic revealed the problem.  The wrong cable was hooked up to the receiver. Of course I was annoyed as this is a simple problem however I was stumped trying to figure out when it would have gotten f’d up.  When I installed the HDTV antenna last year I had to redo those splitters but that was way before the end of football season so I should have noticed the problem right away. Well however/whenever, it happened, the problem was fixed.

Directv annoys me with the way they handle their Sunday Ticket package.  For a few years they were forcing you to pay extra if you want to watch the games in HD which was bullshit.  Then last year they changed that requirement and included HD in the package for free, gee, how nice.  Well they also offer to make the package available for streaming via an Iphone, Ipad, Android or PC but the outrageous $350 you pay for the Sunday Ticket isn’t enough to include this service, you need to drop another $50 in their lap for it.  F that.  I am so sick of service providers raping customers.  I guess the only way we can fight back is with our wallet.

So the next DVD in my Netflix queue (speaking of money grabbing assholes) was Jackass 3.5, the dvd only follow up to Jackass 3D.  3.5 basically has a bunch of stunts that weren’t deemed as good enough for the theater version.  It was in a word, lame.  I just found it a chore to get through.  The stunts just weren’t all that entertaining or funny.  At this point I can say I have have had my fill of Jackass.  If there is a Jackass 4D or 5D sequel in the works I won’t be checking it out.  Thanks for the laughs over the years Johnny but the series has run it’s course, 3.5 gets a C.

Woot off today, FYI.

So Ali was supposed to do her long run Saturday morning with Michelle.  I told her I would go with although I planned to run 7 miles instead of 14, I figured I would keep myself busy until Ali finished up.  Well after the alarm went off Ali looked at her phone and saw a message from Michelle.  Her kids had her up most of the night because they were sick so she wanted to put off the run until Sunday.

Ali was happy to go back to sleep but I told her since I was up I was going to just go run.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep.  I got to the group running location a few minutes late so the majority were already out on the road.  I did a quick stretch and was on my way.

I hadn’t done the Saturday morning group run in ages.  I have just had other stuff going on or been sick and not feeling up to it.  In addition, ever since the run in Central Park, compounded by the run in Ireland, my right knee has been bothering me with some swelling that doesn’t want to go away fully.

I ran a good portion of the first half of the run with Tom, a fellow board member whom I like.  Eventually I did manage to track down a few people although my pace was far from stellar.  (9:45 average)  My body was not loving running the 7 mile route but I endured.  I need to keep at it since the Tough Mudder in December wedges in a 12 mile run WITH 20+ physical obstacles.

When I got home Ali and I went out on a bike ride.  Ali actually agreed to go out on Immokalee Road with me, her first REAL road biking since her crash.  Originally I told her there was a turn around at the 5.5 mile mark that we could do instead of going the full 17.25 mile distance.

I let Ali lead the entire ride so she could set the pace and so I could create a barrier behind her for cars to swing wide around.  She did quite well, on the long straightaway on the way out she was actually going 19+ mph.  The 5.5 mile turnaround came and went, I didn’t point it out to Ali because she seemed like she was doing just fine.  We wound up doing the full distance in something like 1:08.  I believe that may be the fastest Ali has ever done that ride.  I am hoping the ride serves as a springboard for her riding confidence so she puts in more time on the road.

I wanted to give mowing the grass a shot and asked Ali if she could do some of the inside chores before she went to her Phi Mu luncheon.  The standing water had receded in many places although damp, spongy ground was everywhere.

Mowing was a challenge.  The really mucky spots required some strategy to mow.  I would make sure I had forward momentum and hit the soft patch straight on so I could power through the mud without getting stuck.  A few times I slowed down into a tire spinning, mud throwing mess that coated both the tractor and my body.  I managed to mow almost everything that normally gets mowed.

After eating lunch to take a break I went back outside with my boots and weed whacker.  By this time of day it was oppressively warm and humid.  I decided I wanted to knock down the 2-3 foot tall grass that was poking out of the water filled drainage ditches out front, hence the boots.  Unfortunately once I stepped into the 9-10 inch high water I realized that my water proof boots were no longer water proof.  My left foot immediately was soaked.  A later inspection revealed the sole of that boot was cracked, causing the leak.

I didn’t let the wet foot slow me down, I methodically marched up and down the ditch, mercilessly chopping off the heads of the high grass.  I did a full whacking of the property since it had not been done for at least 3 weeks.  By the time I was done I was really wiped out.  Spending all that time out in the sun on the back of my early morning run was a formula for exhaustion.

So Sunday morning the alarm again goes off at 4:45 am.  This time my role was exclusively in run support, I planned to shadow the girls on my bike carrying food/water for their 14 mile run.  I elected to put my Dawes back into service for this duty since it already has the aero bars for varied body position.  I also reattached the rear rack to carry even more water beyond the 4 water bottles I had mounted to the bike/strapped to my back.

We started a little after 6 am and finished up a little after 9.  The ride was not very comfortable for me, made worse by my time on the bike the day before.  My feet, shoulders, back, hands, neck and ass all took turns in aggravating me during the 3 hours on the bike.   Of course dealing with the discomfort was a lot better than dealing with running 14 miles which both Ali and Michelle did a nice job of pulling off.

Next week while Ali is up north I volunteered to be Michelle’s run support once again, this time for a much longer 20 miles+ run.  I am going to make a few changes to the Dawes like throwing regular pedals on it and swapping out the seat for a more comfortable version.

Originally we had loose plans to swim at the water park after Ali’s run but we decided to scrub it and just head home.  Ali was pooped and was eager to nap and I didn’t feel like farting around for an hour waiting for the water park to open up.

While Ali napped I decided to head outside to do some work on my freshly mowed bar park.  First up I made my 2nd attempt at this month’s Bar-barian Challenge.  I thought for something different I would do it on the 11 foot high bar.  I pulled down a 63 second effort, a couple seconds better than my first attempt.  To be honest I was kind of surprised I did better on the high bar since the thicker pipe makes grip tougher.

Next up I dipped my foot into some back lever practice.  Anyone familiar with what a real back lever is will laugh out loud at my effort.  My first try was just insanely bad, with my back being almost perpendicular to the ground instead of parallel. The two subsequent attempts weren’t much better.  I have a long way to go with those.

Finally I spent the most time doing muscle up training.  I really want to work on these, my goal is to be able to do one at Tompkins Square Park when we return in December.  I did a bunch of assisted muscle ups on my parallel bars.  At the end I tried a non assisted muscle up and got very close as you can see in the picture.  My technique, or lack there of is what is stopping me at this point.  Unfortunately my unassisted attempt had to be my last attempt after I ripped open two blisters on my left hand and one on the right.  You can see the session here.

So I fired up my Directv receiver and was happy to see it was working correctly.  I woke up Ali just as the game was getting ready to start.  I was unaware that the Rams were forecast as potential division winners this year, I had assumed the game would be less challenging for the Birds.

Well the way the game started things were looking pretty bad.  First after a very unimpressive opening possession by the Eagles the defense responded by letting Stephen Jackson gallop 50 yards on the first play for a touchdown.  I was like WHAT THE F??!!!  I was not a happy camper.

Well luckily as the game went on the Eagles slowly turned the momentum around and by the end they uncharacteristically closed the door instead of allowing the Rams back into the game with a soft prevent defense. Mike Vick was pretty hit and miss with his arm, missing some easy throws but he made up for it with his legs, running for 100 yards.

The Eagles defense was pretty soft on the run but held the Rams to minimal passing yardage.  They still exhibited that Andy Reid team tendency to give up crucial penalties on 3rd downs where they otherwise would get off the field, pulling the fopaw three times.

On the positive side, DeSean Jackson had a nice game, grabbing big yards including a TD.  LeSean McCoy also ran the hell out of the ball.  He really can make me almost forget about Brian Westbrook.  The new kicker did a decent job despite his incredibly scrawny physique.

Desean also makes the negative list.  He dropped several balls he absolutely should have caught for big yardage. Unlike the kicker, the new punter was more bad than good, launching several wounded ducks.  Asante Samuel pissed me off when he carelessly dropped an incredibly easy interception and then laughed about it.  We don’t pay you millions to shit the bed on easy plays, don’t laugh about it.

The Rams got smashed with injuries during the game, losing something like 6 players including Jackson and Stafford.  Talk about a bad way to start your year, ouch.  I felt bad for them, almost.

I checked in on some other NFL games throughout the afternoon.  I felt embarrassed for Donovan.  Not only was his first pass as a Viking picked off, his numbers for the day were DREADFUL, 7-15 for something like 39 YARDS.  Wow I guess we Eagle fans that were critical of McNabb were not just blowing smoke.  It makes you realize the good job the coaching staff did working around his flaws. Evidently other coaches in the league are not up to that task. It was nice to see the Giants and Cowboys go down in flames as well.

My fantasy team fared well, despite bad numbers by my QB Matt Ryan.  I am sitting up by 30 points with my opponent having one player left to play, Darren McFadden.  Unless he has the best day by far of his career tonight my victory should be pretty assured.

Of course I didn’t forget that yesterday was 9/11.  Not only was it 9/11, it was the 10 year anniversary of the tragic event that has morphed our country ever since. I didn’t spend much time watching the various shows documenting/commemorating the event other than the pregame activities during football.  Personally I don’t need to watch the planes fly into the buildings one more time nor be reminded of just how devastating that days events were. I remember.

In the big picture 9/11 was the launching point for a decade of bad times for our country.  It was the impetus for the two wars that have leeched money by the ton every single day since they began without accomplishing any meaningful/helpful change for the US, besides killing Bin Laden recently.  It also marked the beginning of an economic downturn that we never really have escaped.

When you look at the state of our deeply divided, what can you do for me, f everyone else country it really makes me sad, especially when you recall the unity this country experienced shortly after the attack.  How that mutated into our current state of existence is a lingering tragedy that has no signs of abating anytime soon.

On our trip to NYC we will definitely be visiting Ground Zero. It will be a solemn, powerful and emotional moment.

So I finalized the transportation and lodging for a mid-December trip back to NYC.  I was a bit bummed that the air fare went up $10 per leg in the 24 hour period since yesterday but it still is a good deal, much less than we spent to fly up in August.  For lodging I reserved a room at the Park Central Hotel which is real close to Central Park. It is listed as 4 star hotel but was considerably less than the ridiculous $400 a night the Sheraton was looking for.

Both Ali and I are very excited for the trip.  It will be a great Xmas present to ourselves.  Since our subway experience we now know how easily we can get around the city to see whatever we want to.  Things on the list of possible to do’s this time around are the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden and the Chrysler Building.   It would be cool to catch Spider Man on Broadway.  Of course a return trip to Tompkins Square Park will definitely be on the list.  I’d love to hook up with Al again.

The city will be in full holiday mode at that time which will be worth the price of admission itself.  I heard it is just awesome to see.

Last night I was doing my mini-workout and decided to do some handstand practice.  At the gym during the day I had a few decent holds of 5 seconds or more.  I equated the good holds with doing it on a solid surface as opposed to carpet.  I decided to do the handstands in the kitchen since it is ceramic tile.  Now months ago I would have never tried a handstand in such close quarters since the majority of my efforts would wind up in some sort of fall.

Well since then I have at least become pretty good at getting out of an over balanced hand stand.  Instead of flopping on my back I normally can either walk forward on my hands or spin out of it in a cartwheel type fashion.  So I did a few attempts with minimal success.  I then actually hit the balance point, briefly.  But then I went into over balance mode which I tried to get out of by walking forward on my hands.  Unfortunately I continued to tip over and wound up flopping hard on my back.

Not only did I land on my back, I banged my right knee against the wall and wound up with a bloody toe when they got jammed together, causing a nail to cut the adjacent toe.  My knee actually left an imprint in the drywall, luckily I didn’t punch all the way through.

Ali, who was in the office, came running over to see what happened as did the dogs.  I assured her I was ok.  I didn’t let the crash stop the session however.  Eventually I got a decent 5 second or so hold right at the end.  If you want to just see the crash go here, to see the entire session go here.

Last night I watched Jackass 3D in 2D.  It follows the same format as every Jackass you have ever seen.  Most of the stunts deal with one of three genre’s, bodily excretion, impact or pain.  It was entertaining but not terribly so.  I certainly found myself cringing more than once. I’d give it a B-.  Definitely glad I didn’t waste money seeing it in 3D in a theater.

I have seen a lot of picture of my old home area being flooded out courtesy of the remnants of Lee.  Some of the images are quite dramatic.  I found this picture of Eisenhauer Nissan particularly striking since that is where we bought our first Sentra years ago and is located only a few miles from our old Wernersville townhouse.  When I found out that the “water” was actually mixed with sewage it made even more of an OMG impact.  What a f’cking mess.

My brother got directly hammered by the flooding.  His rental property had water against the walls and two feet of water in the basement.  Luckily nobody lives there right now but regardless it is going to be a huge headache for him to clean up.  The last thing he needs is more expense since he is still in the middle of a never ending divorce proceeding.

All over the area there are examples of chaos from the flooding.  It makes my water problems seem very insignificant.  Luckily in Florida they plan for water by building most homes on mounds that are 3 or 4 feet high.

I was talking to Homey yesterday via IM about the flooding in PA.  He evidently mentioned it (and my name) on the radio.  Within 5 minutes I had a call from my dad saying a friend of his heard the mention.  Homey has mentioned me a number of times over the years as part of his radio banter. It always makes me laugh.

This weekend I plan to resume my regular running routine with a planned 7 mile club run tomorrow morning.  I have the Tough Mudder coming up in December which in addition to 20+ grueling obstacles also just happens to throw in a monster 12 mile run as part of the fun.  I really haven’t done much running since the epic Ireland run, I’ve had some lingering soreness in the right knee.

I’d like to get the property manicured but unfortunately unrelenting daily rain has retarded the evaporation of the standing water.  It might be a mound only mow this weekend.

So I had a voicemail to call back the dermatologist for the lab results of the suspect spot on my face.  I already knew that it was going to be a positive result since they were making me call in.  As expected the skin tested positive for basal cell skin cancer.  The spot is right in front of my right ear.

I had almost the exact same spot on the left side worked on a couple years ago.  I will be undergoing the mohs procedure for the third or fourth time.  Basically they cut away skin and then test the edges to make sure no cancer cells remain.  If you get lucky they get everything the first time, if not you wind up going under the knife repeatedly.  If that is the case not only is it annoying, it’s time consuming as well as there is a large gap in time while the testing is happening.

Of course I am not happy about getting cut on once again.  The fun is scheduled to go down in about two weeks.

Last night after work I headed outside with the intentions of doing muscle up training.  Well that lasted all of 5 minutes.  The marshy backyard is infested with countless mosquitos.  They were all over me in no time.  They were all over the dogs even worse.  I HATE this time of year.  I can’t wait for winter.

I finished up season 5 of Dexter last night.  It was an exciting finish which makes me anxious to get my hands on this season, unfortunately it won’t happen anytime soon more than likely.

In the second half of the season a character named Stan Liddy was introduced, a crooked and nasty cop.  I knew the guy looked very familiar to me but I didn’t quite place where I knew him from until last night, it’s Robocop!  Stan Liddy was played by Peter Weller.    It has been at least two decades since I saw Robocop in anything hence my difficulty in placing the face.

Anyway the bad guys got what they deserved and there are a couple dangling plot lines that should prove to be interesting as this season unfolds.  Dexter kicks ass.  My buddy at work insists that I need to also check out Breaking Bad, he gives it marks as high as Dexter.  Trusting his judgement I now have the first 4 season lined up in my Netflix DVD queue.

With the NFL season set to kick off this weekend I figured I would be proactive and fire up my Directv receiver to make sure everything was ready to go.  After the season ended last year I suspended my service for 6 months since I only use it for the Sunday Ticket.  the receiver has been unplugged since then.

I have done this in the past so I knew when the receiver is first plugged in after being off for a long time it typically is a long process as any updates that occurred during that 6 month period will need to be applied.  I plugged the receiver in and walked away.

Well when I got back to it I saw a 771 Searching for signal error… Great this means the dish sees nothing in the sky.  I did basic troubleshooting steps like resetting the receiver which fixes many problems.  Well it didn’t do anything.  I then tried to remove the access card, a credit card sized piece of plastic that slides into the front of the receiver.  I could not pull it out with my fingers.  That’s odd, normally the card slides out with no more resistance than you would experience at an ATM machine.

I went and got the needle nose pliers I use in Roomba maintenance and grabbed the end of the card.  Even with the pliers it was difficult to yank the card out but it eventually let loose.  I immediately noticed on the top of the card what looked like a burn mark.  The data chip was aligned with the mark on the other side.  Hmm well that can’t be good.  So I decided to give Directv a call.

I described to the guy that my receiver had been off and unplugged for 6 months.  I also described the problem I had with the access card as well as the apparent burn mark.  The tech had me run through some diagnostics.  Ironically the access card seems to still be functional and readable but there was still no signal coming in to the box.

While the tech was having me go through some additional routine steps like disconnecting the coax line I theorized what could have happened.  There were two scenarios that ran through my head.  Perhaps lightning somehow hit the dish ground connection which is shared with the HD antenna causing damage to the receiver.  It seemed unlikely but the burn mark on the card with the hardware unplugged doesn’t make much sense otherwise.

The other theory is when the house was painted in March the painters bumped the dish out of alignment.  The dish is locked firmly in place by a number of nuts and bolts but this is possible as well.  The rep on the phone said they could send a tech out to figure out what is wrong, of course they don’t do this for free.  I told him I would like to do some more checking of the outside equipment before sending out a tech just in case it is something stupid.

Today I am thinking I will just bite the bullet and have them send the tech.  If I play the shell game I might be able to get away with it only costing me $15 to do so.  I can sign up for monthly maintenance for $5 and then cancel it for $10 as opposed to paying $49.99 for a service call.

I got my cell phone bill for last month which included our overseas usage.  I knew this bill was going to be a pig but I didn’t expect it to be a $283 dollar pig.  I dug into the bill details and saw I got double charged for the international data package.   I called in this morning and got that removed.  The extra $30 or so was a result of charges for text messages and a couple brief phone calls.  They dinged us $21 for 42 text messages, a ridiculous fee for something that costs them basically nothing since in Europe they don’t charge extra for text messaging.

Ali and I had discussed after our trip how cool it would be to take a few days near the holidays and go back to NYC since we had such a nice time in our 24 hour whirlwind trip in August.   Yesterday I started laying the groundwork to make it happen.

The first issue was scheduling a free block of time to do it.  Pretty much every weekend in December was booked with either race timing or race participation.  I realized that the trip would have to more or less occur during weekdays. This less than ideal in efficient vacation day usage but that is the way it will have to be if we are going to pull it off.

I was happy to see that the date range I was looking at had some cheap Jet Blue flights available, a little over $200 round trip which is sweet.  I was not quite as happy when I looked into hotel accommodations.

I first checked out the Sheraton we stayed at since we both liked it.  I was encouraged when on the front page of their website I saw the date range I wanted listed as a date that had “deals”.  Well their idea of a “deal” was $400 a night, f that.

So I am thinking I will secure the cheap airfare now and then turn my attention to finding nice but less expensive accommodations.  It will be an awesome thing to see NYC around Christmas.  It will wind up being basically the lion share of the birthday/Xmas presents for Ali and I based on what it will cost.

Well it doesn’t look like I will be mowing anytime soon.  Yesterday we got dumped on with rain again.  As I pulled the trash bins back up to the house I saw the other side effect of massive amounts of rain, mosquitoes.   The wall of the house was covered with hundreds of the little bloodsuckers.  I am hoping the mosquito plane flies overhead tonight.

Last night I made my first attempt at this month’s bar-barian challenge. It is similar to a challenge we did a few months back where we held ourselves with a chin up grip for as long as possible.  This month you do 5 full ROM pull ups and at the top of rep 5 you hold your chin over the bar for as long as you can.  I had done a couple test runs at the gym last week and struggled to hold 40 seconds.  For some reason the simple rotation of hand position makes the hold significantly more difficult.

Since it was a rainy mess outside I once again turned to my Iron Gym for the attempt.  I surprised myself pulling down a 61 second effort.  I seem to put in some of my best efforts on that $20 piece of exercise equipment.  I think the combination of narrow bar with a foam padding really helps my grip, facilitating good outcomes.

I am now 10 deep into Dexter season 5. I spent the majority of last night plowing through them.  The plot is getting more interesting as it moves along.  With only two episodes to go I am looking forward to seeing how some of the story lines work themselves out.

My good buddy Rick Scott has endorsed a looney idea first floated by that flake Michelle Bachman, drilling for oil in the Everglades.  From the accounts I have read, the amount of potential oil in the Everglades is not even a pimple compared to the consumption we use in this county.  The ONLY people this would benefit are the small circle directly responsible for drilling.

The lightly informed that think pumping more holes in the ground in the US is the long term answer to anything are being extremely short sighted.  The problem is our crushing reliance on oil, period.   Trying to fix that problem with “drill, baby drill” mentality is akin to treating obesity by buying pants with an elastic waistband.  It’s moronic.