Archives 2011

I was very saddened to see that Jack Lalanne passed away yesterday.  I was a big fan.  His overwhelming positive outlook on life was something I admired.  His lifelong dedication to fitness is something I try emulate.

A few years back I was really on a Jack Lalanne kick when ESPN used to rebroadcast his original show.  I used to go through the workouts on the show with him regularly and even drug Ali into it a few times.

I have a bunch of his shows on dvd and I even own a Jack Lalanne baseball hat.  I can’t tell you how many times I laughed while watching his shows.  Of course I loved his dog, “Happy” as well who showed up in many episodes.

Jack accomplished many feats of strength well into old age.  The pose you see him holding above is something I could only dream of doing.

I bet Jack would have liked to make it to 100.  He said many times that he couldn’t die, it would ruin his image.

No worries, your image is doing just fine Jack, rest in peace, you earned it.

I was at home training all week.  Instead of making the effort to try to blog at home I decided to just do a brief recap.  After all, blogging would have cut into the time I needed to go get DD coffee every morning with the dogs.

This week long class was for Exchange 2010.  Last year I took two week long Exchange 2007 classes.  There are a ton of similarities between the two versions, the differences probably could have been covered in a day.  This meant that the vast majority of the week was stuff I already knew about which equated to a lot of boring hours.

Sitting at home all day listening to the instructor was somehow more arduous than what I do normally at work, more sitting behind two screens all day.  Maybe it is because I literally had to be paying attention (more or less) the entire time.

Ironically I was in the middle of an Exchange 2010 migration of my own, on my home network.  This migration was expedited when my old server had an unexpected hard drive failure Wednesday night.  I had some very nervous moments while trying to get the old server up and running.  At one point I feared that the nightly back up I have been doing for years was not actually backing up my Exchange server properly which would result in catastrophic loss of email. Luckily, everything was there although I did lose one days worth of mail since the crash happened in the middle of the back up.

I had a very stressful day Thursday trying to get the old server back up.  I needed it up in order to migrate to the new one.  I worked on it until 11:30 that night.

Everything worked out in the end.  I now have our home network and email up and running on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.  There are a few more loose ends to attend to but everything appears to be functional and stable.  If there was a good thing from the crash it was that it gave me some first hand experience in the Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 migration process.

On Wednesday night we had a running club meeting that drug on for two hours +.  We had at least 12 people there.  With that many people in a room it is pretty hard to get things accomplished in a quick manner since varying opinions want to be heard.

One of the things we agreed upon is getting away from the online store that I worked so hard on.  The store was my idea and it is my idea to shit can it.  The store works very well from some perspectives.  Runners love it, it makes it very easy to sign up for races, even multiple races with a few clicks.  The low CC fees with this option allowed us to absorb the fees instead of tacking them on to the registration cost, another plus.

However maintenance of the store has become a nightmare.  I have wound up keying in each and every purchase made on the store as opposed to being able to download them in bulk.  Bulk entry with the store is just too much of a mess plus I feel personally responsible for each and every entry.  I fear if I don’t enter each one as it appears in my email I may risk missing someone.

We are going to go with a different online race registrar that charges more than what we pay with the store but far less than our former registrar.  A $20 entry fee used to cost us $3.25 in fees with Active.com.  With the store it cost a little less than a buck. With the new registrar, Raceit.com,  it will cost about $2 so we are splitting the difference.  That extra $1 will save me a hell of a lot of headaches.

Of course I had to get my exercise in during the week, else I would go mad.  I did a different lunch time routine each day, the most amusing of which was the one I taped. That session included a new activity, the death crawl, which is better seen than explained.

On Saturday I did another 10 mile run in prep for my new, unexpected goal of running a half marathon in early march. Although Ali and the girls were there I ran ahead with another group.  I ran with them for about 4 miles or so until they turned around.

I have found with long distance running it is much easier to do it with someone else, preferably someone who is chatty.  Having someone along to share the effort helps keep your mind off the actual run.  Doing that last 6 miles alone was not great fun.  I did try to pick up the pace considerably over my previous 10 mile efforts, shaving around 6 minutes from the time I posted two weeks prior.

My body is becoming more accustomed to going that distance, I felt negligible physical side effects and spent the rest of Saturday buzzing about doing stuff around the house as I normally would.

Saturday night Ali and I watched a documentary that my Exchange trainer turned me onto on Netflix, Man on Wire.  it is about some french wire walker that snuck into the Twin Towers shortly after they opened, strung a steel cable between them and walked the span back and forth for nearly an hour.

I was amazed that I never heard of this feat.  Granted I was only 7 years old at the time but still…  I found the documentary extremely interesting.  I was feeling the immense fear just from seeing the pictures and video from the event.

Some wire in the brain that controls fear had to be cut in this guys brain.  I absolutely can not imagine what it would be like to be out on a wire at the top of those buildings with absolutely no safety equipment whatsoever.  If you have Netflix put this in your instant queue, it’s a hidden gem. Even now, 35+ years later the people involved in the event are overcome with emotion when they try to describe that moment.

Sunday Ali and I were looking forward to a relaxed kind of day since I got most of the house stuff done the day before.  Unfortunately Ali’s day got cut in half when she wound up having to go to work to cover for kitchen staff that called off .

I kept myself busy doing car maintenance on the Camry and Tacoma. On the Camry I changed the oil/filter, rotated the tires and replaced the cabin air filter.  The Tacoma just got an oil change.

I had a problem with my one floor jack, it stopped jacking.  Luckily my neighbor let me borrow his jack to finish the tire rotation.  If you watch the broadcast of the event you will see the car teetering as it was balanced on the front and rear center point.  I didn’t realize how unstable it was until I watched the video back.  Next time I will change my jacking plan.

During the tire rotation I utilized my air wrench to remove and reattach the lug nuts.  I realized that working with air tools is even more satisfying than pulling the trigger on a cordless drill.  I just love the sound as I zip off nuts in milliseconds and the reassuring noise made as the tool drives them back in place.  Of course all of this was made possible by the repair I finally made on the air compressor a few weeks back.

Most of the latter part of my Sunday was spent watching the two playoff games.  I loved that both of them were played in frigid temperatures, the only thing that would have made it better would have been a snowstorm.

Ironically both games followed a similar storyline where one team was dominant early on with a sizable lead and had to hold on down the stretch to win.  My brother is a huge Steelers fan so I was glad they won.  My trip to Green Bay years ago solidified the Packers as one of my fav teams as well so no matter who wins the Super Bowl I will be glad for different reasons.

Thought so.

Wow I just went through one of the biggest cluster f’s of my IT career.

We were scheduled to perform an upgrade to the software we use for cashiering on Wednesday night.  You would think that the upgrade wouldn’t be that big of a deal since we were moving from version 2.37 of the product to version 2.45.  Well you think wrong.

When this upgrade was planned out we estimated it might take 2-3 hours max.  It was an after hours upgrade that we started on at 5pm.  I left the office at 12:30 am.

Without boring you with technical details, basically everything you could imagine going wrong did.  I lost count of how many technical hurdles we had to clear.  By the time we left we thought we had the core product working with some ancillary issues that we would deal with the following day.

Well when I arrived bleary eyed the next morning after a few hours of sleep it turned out there was a fresh new boatload of issues to hammer out, stuff we couldn’t have tested until clerks started doing stuff.  I spent nearly the entire day on the phone, sometimes with two or three people simultaneously working on both the problem and putting out fires simultaneously.

Finally late afternoon we figured out what was the root of our problem and corrected it.  There are still some minor things to squash of course.

Some of my co-workers commented that they couldn’t believe how calm I remained throughout what was an incredibly challenging and frustrating situation.  Despite my many personality deficiencies I am pretty damn good at fixing problems.  I learned long ago that panic does not assist in that process.

The timing for this was not great as at home we have all sorts of ducks to line up for the half marathon I am timing this weekend.  Registration for this year has swelled to the highest numbers since I have been involved with the club.  I have a bunch of people wanting my attention regarding various aspects of the race.

In addition to helping with issues before the race Ali is going to be running in the event as well for the second time.  She hopes to improve on her time from my last year. In a way I am jealous, now that I have the idea of completing a half marathon in my head.

After this event we still don’t get any breaks as we move right into preparing for Ali’s race two weeks later. Just gotta keep moving.

So I picked Ali up at the airport yesterday.  Her flight was delayed so I used some of the extra time to run some errands.  I grabbed some dog food. went home and picked up the dogs, stopped at my mom’s to drop off an unemployment form she couldn’t print and then scurried off to the airport.

The cell phone parking lot was the fullest I had ever seen it.  The snowbirds have descended upon southwest Florida big time.  There has been a dramatic increase in congestion everywhere since the weekend.

I talked to Ali pretty regularly while she was up in PA so there wasn’t much she had to tell me.  It didn’t take long until our attention turned to the mountains of work that waited for us for the next few days.

When we got home I pulled out the frost cover materials for the garden.  I have to work late this evening so I wanted to make sure I had everything pulled out so either Ali or myself could cover the garden and it’s newly planted additions from this latest dreaded cold snap.

The rest of the night was just spent doing stuff.  Most of my night was consumed labeling and organizing the rest of the 500 extra timing chips for the race.  It was extremely tedious work, I was borderline ready to snap towards the end of it.  I justin.tv’d a brief portion of the process to illustrate how cumbersome it was. I still have to scan all 500 chips to get them into the timing system.

During the evening Randall sent me his first ever youtube video.  Although he has participated in a number of my own videos, he never made his own.  For some reason he was shy about it, making the video private so only invited people could see it.

I had challenged him the other day to see how long he could hold a wall handstand.  I told him that part of my handstand training has been 60 second holds.  Randall turned in a 55 second effort which wasn’t bad at all however he included excuses about his weight being a limiting factor.

Well I had to shoot a quick video response to obliterate any idea Randall had that his 55 second effort was equal to mine.  I used Ali’s Pampered Chef timer.  I set it to 73 seconds, allowing three seconds for me to get my feet up on the wall.  Holding my body weight for that long was not easy.  The last 20 seconds or so my shoulders started to shake but I held it until the beeper sounded.  I immediately posted it to youtube to set the bar a few feet higher.  You can see the attempt here.

I am sure when Randall shows up in late January a wall handstand hold competition will be in the works.

A had a weird dream the other night.  I only remember bits and pieces but here they are.

I was a judge for some show that was like Junkyard Wars, two teams made something out of everyday materials.  The one team’s object was pretty ordinary, I recall not being impressed, but I can’t remember what the object was exactly.

The other team included a pair of twins.  Their project was up in the attic of the house.  Access to the attic was quite difficult.  At the top of the steps I had to crawl through something that looked like mail slot.  Their item was definitely superior but again I can’t recall what it was.

I later find myself outside in an alleyway.  I am approached by a young kid with very dark skin and a mullet style hair cut.  I later find out this is one of Gary Del’Abate’s kids (bababooey).  Gary starts talking to me briefly but then about 6 or 7 nervous cows approach us in the alley.  Gary says “I have to go take care of these cows, they have anxiety issues.”

Gary disappears around the corner herding the cows away.  End of dream.

This week is going to be hell week.  It is our busiest week of the year as far as race timing goes since the half marathon is this Sunday.  There is a bulge in the amount of entries which has created additional work for me, including preparing an additional 500 timing chips.  Preparing the chips is a very arduous process.

First I have to print out an 8 meter long string of numbers on my P-touch labeler. Then I have to cut each number off, peel the backing off and affix it to each chip.  It takes a LONG time.  After that I have to scan every chip on a USB reader to get it’s unique 16 digit code.  I then merge all of those codes into a file which is imported into the timing system.

Well I figured I would try to make the job more pleasant by watching the new Karate Kid movie that I have had sitting in a Netflix envelope for a couple months while I worked on chips.

My first thoughts were that Will Smith’s kid is too young to be playing the next Karate Kid.  He also is much too full of himself.  I found myself generally becoming irritated with the kid through out the movie.  Luckily Jackie Chan does a nice job playing the mentor.

The plot line is nearly identical to the original although I was disappointed that Jackie Chan didn’t get to kick the evil kung fu instructors ass at the end. The movie was ok, not nearly as good in my opinion as some of the acclaim I heard when it was released.  I’d give it a B.

Ali comes home this afternoon.  She will will not be happy to go from 5 days of fun right into a week of craziness.

I can’t believe it is supposed to get into the 30’s again Thursday morning.  No climate change huh?

I neglected to talk about the tragic shooting over the weekend.  You may be surprised at some of my thoughts about it.

First off it is just a horrible event, magnified by the fact that an innocent 9 year old girl was one of the casualties of this maniac.  Obviously anyone that commits such an act has lost all touch with reality.  It seems like the main target, the Arizona congress woman is going to survive the attack although who knows what her final condition will be.

There has been an immediate uproar after the shooting directed at Sarah Palin and this map that was used on her web site targeting potential wins for the tea party prior to the election.  Giffords just happened to be one of the few Democrats that actually won.

The controversy was that posting a map with gun sights on it somehow encourages loonies to go out and shoot these people.  Even for me, someone who is disgusted that someone like Sarah Palin is given an ounce of credibility in the political arena, thinks that this is too much of a reach.

Yea was it stupid or in poor taste to use gunsights to mark your political targets?  Yea, probably.  Is it reasonable to to say that it was the cause of the shooting?  Nah, come on now.

I mean really, what are we supposed to do, sterilize society to the point where everything that is said or done is run through censors first to make sure it doesn’t offend anyone or even worse, give the wrong idea to the mentally unstable?   Let’s pull anything violent that is on tv while we are at it.

Sorry I am always happy to bash Sarah Palin but to think she is even indirectly responsible for this shooting is stretching reality mighty thin in my book.  Let’s chastise her for what she really is, an ignoramus.

When I got home on Friday night I was on fire.  I had it set in my head that I was going to buzz through the majority of my inside chores that night and man did I ever. In the span of two hours I had them all done PLUS some unexpected bonus cleaning.  I cleaned out/organized the hobby/exercise room AGAIN.  I think one of the other times Ali was out of town I did this and slowly over time it became cluttered again.  I am going to really push for that to not happen again.

While I was in the process of working on the room I kept noticing this nasty, musty smell that was annoying me.  I put my nose to work, smelling different areas until I could track down the culprit, the timing mats.  You see the last race I timed it rained.  After the race I left the mats out on the driveway to dry but evidently I didn’t let them out long enough.  I took both mats out on the lanai, spread them out, and sprayed them with Lysol.  They really smelled badly.  Thankfully after two days the smell went away.

After my assault on house chores I got another urge, to go get a monitor.  When I was at Sam’s Club on Thursday I saw they had a nice deal on a 27″ monitor.  My plan was to use my Best Buy gift cards I received at Christmas and use them towards the purchase of a 27 inch monitor there.  So I headed out around 7:30.  I arrived at the store and beelined back to the computer department.  I quickly surveyed the monitors they had and didn’t see anything larger than a 23″ monitor. Surely I must have just missed the bigger models.  I went back and forth in front of the shelves several times, nope nothing bigger than 23″. SHIT, how can that be.

I walked out of Best Buy dejected but then decided to walk into the Staples right next to it.  Same deal there, nothing bigger than 23″.  Well this just was not going to fly so on the way home I stopped back at Sam’s and got my 27″ behemoth.  It is SWEET. It provides a huge window into my digital second world.

On Friday the replacement server arrived.  I spent a good chunk of my final hours before bed starting  the migration process.  It is going to be a long and twisty road until I get everything migrated.  It is bringing back some of the headaches I encountered when I did something similar at work a year ago.  Oh well it will be worth it when I am done.  I just need to make sure to not trash any data along the way.

So Saturday morning I wasted little time before I was outside working on more projects.  After weeding I planted all of the new garden additions.  If we can avoid frost for awhile we could have a nice diverse crop this year including lettuce, swiss chard, peppers, onions, carrots, beets, tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower. I also hung the new bird feeder and replaced a number of the solar pathway lights that were dead.

When I returned to the inside I got a call from Ali.  Evidently my mom posted on Facebook that she was left go from her job again Saturday morning.  Ali said she had called and talked to my mom for a bit and she advised I do the same which of course I planned to do.

So I called up mom to find out what happened.  The last time I knew everything was fine at her job.  When she was hired back part time she understood her role to be more of a relief pitcher.  Basically she was supposed to take customers if the two full time salespeople were busy, otherwise her role was to do most of the support that is required to maintain the department.

Mom told me a month or two ago that her sales manager mentioned that he wanted her to start taking more customers.  Evidently since that mention mom still was doing more support than active selling and instead of letting her know he needed more, the sales manager unceremoniously let her go without warning.  It was a real classless move in my opinion considering he knew how important the job was to my mom.  Since Saturday mom found out that this had been planned for awhile, the manager had already made arrangements to hire someone else, a relative of a friend, FULL TIME, to take mom’s spot.

I mean WTF, mom has worked at this place for years.  The manager couldn’t have at least said to my mom that she HAD to start selling more or he would have to let her go?  I got the impression the initial mention was more of a suggestion, not an edict.  To go from that to “you are out of here” with no communication in between seems idiotic if not cowardly.

So now mom is once again left with a big ball of uncertainty.  For someone that would rather be inside a rigid box of routines this is even more of a problem.

She no longer has any insurance coverage, her extended Cobra coverage ran out at the end of 2010.  Her attempts to buy insurance so far have been unsuccessful, after all insurance companies don’t want to insure older people, they aren’t profitable.  I would love for all these people that railed against health care reform to be placed into this situation and see if their tune doesn’t change very quickly. Now my mom has two options, hope she can land a job that offers benefits or roll the dice until she is 65 when she can qualify for Medicare. It just blows.

When I talked to my mom on the phone I told her I could pick her up and she could stay the weekend which she of course declined.  She said she was in shock but fine which sounded as reassuring as  a used car salesman making his sales pitch.  I decided to drop in unannounced with the dogs in tow to cheer mom up.

Mom seemed ok outside of the chain smoking she was doing.  After all it isn’t the first time she has gone through this.  Her biggest concern was having to wait until Monday to get any answers as far her options go with unemployment and social security.

While I was there I got mom registered again for employment on the Home Depot site, a process that takes surprisingly long.  I also did some maintenance for mom while I was there, running out to get a new flapper for her one toilet that was running periodically.  I also put her Chrsitmas tree bag in the van to store it in our small shed, freeing up substantial room in her closet.

I reassured mom that things will work out one way or the other.  The good news is she has enough money in the bank to ride out the financial deficit for a decent period of time, as long as she can avoid huge medical costs. Of course Ali and I are always there as her safety net.

It really upsets me to see mom get shafted like this, again.  The business world can be a pretty cold and merciless environment.  I will be hoping that karma does it’s best to repay the manager for his actions.  For my part I will do my best to bring as many leads as possible to mom’s door and support her however she needs it.

On Saturday evening my buddy from work stopped over to watch some playoff football.  We had a good time drinking beer and eating subs from the nearby Italian pizza place.  He stayed until the Seahawks shocked the world by beating the Saints.  I got to taste tequila for the first time, I was not impressed.

Sunday morning I made arrangements to be a surrogate runner with Ali’s girlfriends, Michelle and Christy.  Michelle said she was planning to run anywhere from 7-10 miles.  Hearing numbers like that a month ago would have prompted a “thanks, but no thanks” response from me.  However since I had the ten mile miracle run the day after Christmas I knew I could do it.

I met up with them at 8:30.  Before we started I stripped off my training  pants and hooded sweatshirt.  The 52 degree air felt pretty darn brisk on my exposed arms and legs but I knew once we got moving I would be fine.  I also decided to wear my new sneakers to give them a true test, they passed.

Christy stayed with us till the 3.5 mile mark where she turned around to run back.  Michelle and I decided to do the full 10.  Michelle had it in her head that she needed to do 10, even though she hasn’t run any significant distance in quite awhile.  It’s the same kind of thinking I utilized for my first 10 miler so I was happy to help Michelle push to her goal.

I let Michelle set the pace the entire run, I didn’t want her to feel like I was pushing her.  We wound up completing the distance close to 3 minutes faster than I did the first time.  I actually felt better this time around.  I still had the legs that felt like concrete the last two or three miles but I didn’t have the hip and foot pain that I encountered the first time, perhaps a testament to the new sneakers.

It felt good to accomplish the magical 10 mile mark once again.  It even has me thinking about trying to do the Hooters Half Marathon in a few months.  That would be an unexpected feather in my cap. It’s only another three miles farther, I think I can grind it out.

I thanked Christy and Michelle for allowing me to tag along and headed home which included a stop at Dunkin Donuts of course.

I had precious little time at home.  After letting the dogs out I almost immediately had to head right back out.  I wanted to go see the 12:40 showing of Tron at the IMAX theater.  I thought I might be arriving just as the previews started but it turned out I made it with 15-20 minutes to spare. I was quite happy to see only 20 or 30 people in the theater.

I saw the original Tron many moons ago but don’t remember all that much about it.  The biggest thing the first Tron was known for were the special effects which were spectacular for it’s day.  Well the present day version of the movie had some pretty awesome special effects as well.

It is the perfect film for IMAX, the immersion into the computerized world of Tron was really made complete seeing it in that environment.  I really thought the movie was solid from start to end, I enjoyed the hell out of it and would give it a solid A.  No it isn’t the next Avatar but it is pretty damn good.  If you want to see it in IMAX you only have a precious few days left to do it before Green Hornet takes over.

Sitting in the theater for a few hours really stiffened up my legs after the long run.  I walked like an old man across the parking lot to Best Buy.  I wanted to spend my gift cards.  After some perusing I decided to buy three 360 items, an Xbox Live points card, a voice headset and some Kinect dancing game that I thought Ali would really enjoy.

By the time I got home it was just about kick off for the Eagles game.  I went into the game feeling very uninspired about their chance for winning.  To me the last few games of the season set a bad tone as well as exposing just how to beat the Eagles, blitz Vick.

Luckily I was pretty distracted during the first half of the game as I was working on labeling extra timing chips for the half marathon.  The Eagles languished through the first half playing more uninspired football, they looked overmatched on both defense and offense.  Akers also developed a case of shankitis to boot.

In the second half the Eagles managed to get a couple breaks and big plays.  They actually wound up in the position to be driving for the winning score with less than a minute to go.  When Vick tossed the interception to end the game I didn’t yell out in anger, didn’t make any gestures with my hands, I just turned it off.   It was odd.

In a way it is nice to be emotionally disconnected enough from the outcome of the game so that it hasn’t carried over into my personal life.  There have been many, many times where the playoff losses would hang with me for an extended period of time.  Not this one.

Despite my apathy there are a few things I am really tired of with this team.

Howdy Doody defensive coordinator Sean McDermott is a failure in my book.  Despite being mentored under Jimmy Johnson for a number of years, he is no Jimmy Johnson.  The defense has basically sucked all year long.  You need look no further to justify his dismissal than the fact that the team had the worst red zone TD percentage IN THE LEAGUE, yep, dead last.  Basically if a team got inside the 20 yard line they were guaranteed to get a TD. McDermott has to go.

Andy Reid.  Sure this has been said again and again.  He is a good coach, he isn’t a great coach.  A great coach knows how to manage the clock.  A great coach doesn’t have the worst challenge record in the league.  A great coach doesn’t have his team be among the leaders in penalties time and again. I truly don’t think we will ever win the SB with fat Andy on the sidelines.

Lincoln Financial field.  Ever since this place has opened the Eagles have enjoyed no significant home field advantage.  I was having a hard time finding their overall record there since the place opened but I know it isn’t good, slightly over .500 at best.  Teams used to FEAR coming to the Vet.  The Linc is like a resort in comparison.  Why the team has been unable to transform the energy of the crowd at the Linc into wins is beyond me.  All I know is the team has next to no home field advantage.  Hell our kicker doesn’t even know how to kick in it yet.

In the big picture, I wrote this season off before it even started so making the playoffs is just a bonus.  It’s just too bad that even with a different cast of characters the script still plays out the same.

This week is going to hellishly busy.

So there have been a few changes since Howard agreed to re-sign with Sirius only one of them has been positive which was the inclusion of the Stern Channels on the official Sirius-XM Iphone app. The rest of the news has been all bad as far as I’m concerned.

First Howard has been cutting his live programming back 20% a day.  Including the wrap up show, we used to get live content until noon.  Now it is all over at 11.  I enjoy the wrap up show, Gary and John actually allow people to finish a thought, something Howard is not very good at doing.  I would have been fine with just filling in the extra time with an extended wrap up show but nope we don’t even get that.

Add on top of that Howard’s stated intent to work even less during this new 5 year contract.  It sounded like eventually he will only be on three days a week in addition to his already staggering amount of vacation.  This wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t fill those dead days stupidly with clips from the live shows of the week.  I mean wtf, I just heard the show on Monday, do I need to hear it again on Friday?  Talk about exerting the bare minimum of effort.

F let Riley Martin, Sal & Richard, or any of the other whacked out personalities  involved with the show fill in some of that dead time.  Howard bitches sometimes about the staff providing good content outside the boundaries of his live show. He wants to have his cake and eat it too.  If you are going to cut back your hours to a bare minimum at least give Sirius customers SOMETHING live to listen to.

In addition to Howard giving us less for our money, Sirius did not reach an agreement with Bubba to continue on in his role in the afternoons.  Now I don’t enjoy Bubba as much as Howard but I enjoyed listening to him more often than not.  Sirius came in and offered Bubba an 80% pay cut which is f’ing ridiculous.

Ironically Bubba was originally used to fill in the dead spots when Stern was not on the air which worked out great.  Now Sirius seems to care less if we have original programming or not.

Hell I wish they would have given whatever they pay Jay Thomas to sit in on Friday mornings on 101 to Bubba.  Jay’s show is AWFUL in my opinion.  I have never been able to listen to more than 10-15 minutes of it without turning it off.

This just continues a long tradition of Sirius offering it’s customers less and less while charging them more and more.  I really hate giving them any of my money.  I am hoping to at least cut loose one of my subscriptions and just use my phone to receive content in the truck.

Yesterday after dropping off Ali at the airport I made 3 stops on the way home, Home Depot, Sam’s Club and Publix.  At Home Depot I grabbed an air filter for the bedroom vent, some more vegetables to restock the frost damaged garden, some weed and feed to combat the latest infestation of dollar weed, a bird feeder to replace one that is in bad shape and some cheap solar pathway lights to replace some other lights that are dead.  These items will be planted/installed this weekend.  I already replaced the air filter last night.

Last night I also cleaned Tuki’s cage and did some laundry.  It is part of my plans for a front loaded weekend.  I plan to get pretty much any and all weekend chores/projects done tonight and tomorrow morning, leaving the rest of the weekend to my own pleasure. It is the way I would prefer most weekends went.

My new server is scheduled to arrive today, I may start the arduous process of migration of my home network.  I am planning to catch Tron 3D Saturday night, most likely by myself unless I manage to find a “date”.  Then of course we have the Eagles playoff game late Sunday afternoon.

Last night I fired up my 360 and playon.tv to watch the last 5 episodes of Caprica.  Once I started I just had to plow through till the end which didn’t wind up until 12:15 am. The last 5 episodes were good, especially if you keep in mind originally they were designed to just wrap up season 1 not the entire show.

At the end of it all there was a quick montage that attempted to summarize what would have happened if the show was able to continue, including Zoe becoming the first “skin job”.  There were a couple storylines from the show that were left entirely dangling in the wind with absolutely no closure like what the f happened to Tamara? Oh and who exactly shot the GED agent?

Even with the few expected loose ends I thought the final 5 episodes were very strong.  Caprica was a fantastic show that was a worthy successor to BSG.  It may have just been too fracking intellectual for some of the minions out there, too bad.  Another one of my favorite shows bites the dust.