Archives 2011

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.

So Saturday morning we had our second race in as many weeks to time.  Once again I brought along the new equipment so I could do a chip start.  The set up of this race was not conducive to having AC power run out ot the start line so I did several things differently from the week before.

Last week I connected to the timing box using regular CAT 5 cables plugged into a switch.  This time I used a CAT 5 crossover cable to eliminate the need for the switch (and AC), I also connected a different laptop to the timing box than the week before.  None of these changes should have been problematic or so I thought, so I didn’t bother testing it ahead of time.  My bad.

So I run out to the start line with about 5 minutes to go to set up the equipment.  Just getting the mats physically laid out across the road was a major challenge with 500 runners all converging on the start line.  Finally after pushing bodies out of the way I got the mats down and turned the box on.

There is an application on the laptop that I have to use to connect to grab the times.  The app was unable to connect.  I verified I had a link light on the ethernet port  of both devices but I was not able to connect over the network.  Now the race director was waiting on me to start the race.  After some more fast attempts to fix the issue I realized it wasn’t something I was going to do on the spot.  I turned off the box and just told George to start the race.

I was frustrated by the failure.  I knew ultimately it was my fault for not testing this combination of equipment together.  It was a good learning experience which is the basis for my bringing the start line equipment to all of the races, even those that don’t warrant a chip start, to work out the bugs for when it does matter.  Further investigation at home revealed that my lack of connectivity was caused from a class A subnet mask being configured on the laptop instead of a class C mask, something that in normal pc networking would not cause the devices to not talk to each other, especially when direct connected. When I changed the mask to 255.255.255.0 everything was peachy.

Other than the start line f up the race timing went fine.  Once the race started Ali was off and running with Michelle who started running much earlier.  Ali wound up running 11 of the 21 miles with Michelle.  I sat around and waited for Ali to return. The race was done and packed away by 9:20 or so.  Ali and Michele didn’t roll into the parking lot till about 10:15.  I passed the time going out and getting coffee and then sitting on a bench at the park watching the ducks and an anhinga drying off after a swim in the lake. I didn’t really mind just hanging out for awhile as I sipped my coffee.

I had hoped to get the grass mowed this weekend but it didn’t happen.  Repeated dumping of rain during the week left many areas of the yard too soggy for productive cutting.  It doesn’t look horrible yet so I figured I could hopefully knock it out one of the nights after work this week.  One less thing to do this weekend.

Ali had done the weeding on Friday so that was one less thing to do and we had the cleaning crew in for the first time in a couple months on Friday as well.  It all added up to a three day weekend without a crushing load of must do’s, a nice thing.

Ali spent the majority of Saturday afternoon sleeping.  I headed out with the dogs in the party van while she snoozed.  I had a few stops to make.  The first stop of all was to put air in the tires of the party van.

The van had developed a vibration in the front end in recent weeks and it was getting worse.  I thought that perhaps uneven tire pressure could help matters.  Well when I got out at the gas station and approached the drivers side front wheel I could feel heat radiating off the alloy wheel along with the distinct smell of burning brake pad.  Great.

Realizing that on the drive to the gas station I hardly applied the brakes I knew that something was rubbing, seized up or any other number of not good things, all of which will add up to a good sized repair bill. Well I knew it was already f’d up so I decided to just finish my errands anyway.

The first stop was at Home Depot where I grabbed silicone sealant and a couple spring clamps to facilitate the repair of my Garmin gps.  Next up was a stop at mom’s place.  Mom’s Roomba developed an issue a few weeks ago where it just wants to back up.  I gave her a couple things to do to fix the issue but they were unsuccessful.

I brought a can of compressed air with in the hope of being able to blow out some of the sensors that typically cause this problem.  I struck out as well and told mom I would need to take the robot with me for further surgery.

My last stop was Wal-mart to grab oil and oil filters to swap out on both the Tacoma and Camry.  I use high grade Mobil 1 synthetic on the Camry.  Damn that stuff gets expensive..

When I got home I told Ali about the van brake issue.  I told her I planned to drop it off at Tire Choice on Sunday on our way to the water park since I had a 10% off any repair voucher from them.  I knew the repair was going to be costly and the 10% would actually add up to a sizeable chunk of change.

My Saturday night was spent doing robot repairs, how exciting. In total I have 7 Roombas of different flavors, 8 if you include the one I gave mom.  5 of them had problems.  I decided I was going to take a crack at fixing as many as possible.

In many cases, Roomba problems are the result of scuzz getting into the guts of the robot.  Depending where this scuzz winds up it can do stuff like block sensors, strip gears or burn out motors.

When I opened up my mom’s Roomba it was stuffed with lint.  Evidently her carpet must shed the stuff in droves.  I sucked out what I could with the vacuum cleaner and then I took it out to the garage to be blown out extensively with my air compressor.

I reassembled the robot and fired it up, it still backs up, damn it.  I turned my attention to the other robots hoping I could get another one working that I could give to mom.

I next worked on my second Dirt Dog robot, the garage/workshop sweeping robot.  This one had a similar backing up issue.  I cleaned the robot up extensively and initially thought I fixed it.  Unfortunately after further testing the backing up returned.  I am not sure where the issue is.

On the positive side I did get three robots working that were not operational before, two of the three were fixed by thorough cleaning.  The third Roomba got the brush deck from mom’s Roomba to fix a stripped gear problem.  It felt good to bring several Roombas back to life.  I designated one of them, an older Discovery model to go into service at mom’s condo.

I also finalized my Garmin repair.  All I did was goop in some sealant, wipe off the excess and let the spring clamps in place overnight.  I used the watch later in the weekend without incident.  I was pleased.

On Sunday we headed to the water park as planned, me driving the party van and Ali following in the car.  I dropped off the van and asked for them to call me later when they find something out.

I originally had hoped Ali would go out and ride bike with me on Livingston Road, something she has refused to do since her crash months ago.  Ali still refused to do so, claiming it wasn’t fear at this point and instead she just didn’t feel like having to “keep up with me”.  I assured her I was fine with not pushing pace in order to just get her back out on the road and over her mental obstacle with doing so.  Ali still adamantly refused which frustrated me.  I told her I would then just follow her and Christy around the park, which frustrated Ali. Oh well.

So we rode around the park at a casual pace not getting out of the 13mph range very often.  In total we probably rode around 10 miles, I accidentally had my GPS stopped for a portion of the ride.  After we got done riding Ali said she wanted to just run for a couple minutes with Christy. I said fine, I would get the bikes racked up and ready to go.

As I was sitting on the curb removing my bike shoes I noticed a SUV pull into a handicap spot.  I then see a hispanic guy  get out, I would peg him as somewhere in his 30’s.  He looked perfectly healthy to me.  He went around to the other side of the vehicle and let out his two kids who looked perfectly healthy as well.

Of course this immediately annoyed the piss out of me.  People that somehow think they are entitled to beat/scam the system for their own personal benefit sicken me.  What if a person with a genuine handicap needed that spot that was filled by this f’ing lazy asshole?  When Ali got back I told her about the unhandicapped hispanic.  She went out and took a picture of his license plate which she forwarded to me to investigate.  So far I found out  that there is no handicap placard assigned to this vehicle so this jerk either stole it or is using somebody else’s placard.  Either way, I am on to him and his fraud will not go unnoticed.

So Ali and I both put in some laps at the pool.  I had not swam in quite awhile, probably 5 weeks at least.  For this reason I was very surprised that I had my fastest times of the entire summer.  I averaged right around 8 minute 400’s where I was averaging closer to 8:45’s for the last 4 months.  I theorized to Ali that maybe it was because the bike effort was not of the strenuous variety, although I hardly use my legs anyway when swimming.

After the swim we ate lunch and hung out a little bit.  I received a call from the garage after the swim regarding the van.  As expected the damage was substantial, one of the calipers had frozen.  In addition to the damage on the driver side, the woman Tires Plus said the passenger side rotor was right at the minimum thickness and would need to be replaced in the near future.  Of course her recommendation was to fix it now which I agreed to.  I told them to put off work on a slightly loose right upper ball joint which is a longer term issue.

Well anyway, all this work was going to take some time so I was ok spending some of it lounging around the water park.  We laid around for a little while but the combination of persistent bees and the heat from sitting in only a partially shaded spot became annoying.

We planned to go back to mom’s place after the water park so I could give her the replacement Roomba as well as some cheese she left at our place while house sitting.  We hung out there with mom for a bit and chatted.  By the time we left it was about 2:15.  I called the garage and told the woman I was going to driving back towards her area in a little while and wondered how the repair was going.  She told me the van should be done in about an hour.  Ok fine, I will find something to do until then.

That something was a stop at Best Buy to get a couple fans for my computer.  My computer which is now at least 5 years old, a record for me, has developed some noise issues.  They have been going on for awhile so I almost don’t even notice them at this point.  Ali however finds them quite annoying.  I bought two fans which I theorized would excise the noise demons, one that blows hot air out of the side of the case and another that pulls fresh air in from the front vents.

When I replaced the fans later the majority of the noise was gone however later a high pitched squeal still made itself heard now and then.  I will have to do some further investigation to see if I can track it down.  It annoys Ali so much that I could say I will just buy a new computer and she would be fine with it, just to be rid of the noise..

Ok so after Best Buy Ali drops me off at the garage a little after 3.  She asks if she should wait to make sure it was done.  I told her it was no big deal, if it wasn’t quite done I would just hang around, it was better than…..

Ok f it.  The f’ing connection dumped so I lost the last half of the entry and I don’t have the patience to recreate it.

A Cliff Notes version of the rest of the weekend.  The van repair had me waiting two hours instead of the one promised.  We watched Hachi, A Dog’s Tale.  I give the movie an A.  If you get through it without crying you have no soul.  I took my new Trek on the Publix Ride and PR’d, yay for me. I cleaned out the hobby room, again. I am now watching season 5 of Dexter.  It isn’t as good as the prior 4 seasons but still well worth watching.

The End…. f’ing blog…

So yesterday I left early to prepare the house for the fantasy football draft I was hosting, there was a TON to do.   The good thing was since this was the third year I was hosting I already had a pretty solid game plan on what had to be done.

On the left you can see how the great room looked before I began the rearranging process.  I worked a solid two hours buzzing around the house.  I needed to set up two tables so there would be ample space for owners to set up their laptops since many of them would be bringing one along.

I also had to work on getting the connection up and running for the three remote owners attending the draft.  Last year we used a new feature introduced with Skype 5.0, group video conference calls.  Last year it was a free feature in the beta.  Well evidently in the last year Skype decided to make this feature a PREMIUM feature that required you to spend some money.  Luckily they had a free 7 day trial of premium features that allowed me to slide by without dropping any cash.

By the time I was done with my efforts this is what the room looked like.  I wound up dragging in the chairs from the lanai for seating around the fold up table.  I also ran power strips under each table as a power source for the multiple laptops that would be in attendance.

To ensure adequate lighting I temporarily replaced the CFL bulbs that normally reside in the room with old fashioned 100 watt incandescent lights.

I filled the cooler with beverages and ice, labeled the recycling box, set up table snacks and handled a dozen other small details.

For my part of the food contribution I had a couple pizzas from Publix, spanikopita, tacquitos and bagel bites (which never even made it out of the box).  Luckily Ali got home before 6 to help with the food prep, I would have been in deep shit without her.

Prior to people showing up the house was hit with a SEVERE storm.  Leading up to the storm there was huge wind hitting the front of the house.  I could hear the garage door straining against the pressure.  When the rain hit it was literally a deluge.  Our property was actually well on it’s way to being water free until last night.  Unfortunately now we are back to living in marshlands.

The owners started showing up.  Most of them brought food or drink or both.  The kitchen island was stuffed with unhealthy food and we had three coolers of beer and other drinks against the wall.  Again Ali was a big help getting it all somewhat organized.

I had some issues getting the remote Skype connection stable.  One of the owners kept crashing Skype on my laptop when he connected.  It turned out that we only had 1 of the 3 remote owners connected in with a video feed, the other two were audio only connections.  It worked out ok.

In addition to our remote owner connection we used some more tech in this years draft, doing a “live” draft on the CBS Sportsline site.  It was pretty cool.  Basically you logged into the league website and launched a draft room app.  The app kept track of whose turn it was, who they picked and who was next all in real time.  It worked very well.  In the past after the draft one of the commissioners had to manually enter all of the picks into the system, a large pain in the ass.  This way, when the draft was done, all of the teams were already populated on the web site.  In fact this might make a physical gathering of owners in future drafts unnecessary except for social interactions.

Like I mentioned yesterday, for the second year in a row I had the last pick.  This is both a good and bad thing.  The bad is it means I had no shot to get an elite top 3 player on my team.  It also meant that my wait between picks was ridiculously long.  On the good side, when I did pick I was making two consecutive picks since the draft order tick tocks back and forth each round.

Just like every year, my fantasy football draft prep was very minimal.  All I had was a print out from the CBS site that ranked the players by position.  I was also busy doing party maintenance so not a whole bunch of thought went into the picks.  There were a few times when I kicked myself realizing I could have made a better choice.

You can see my team on the left.  For the first time ever I don’t have the Eagles defense which bums me out.  I did grab a few Eagles but only one of them would be a starter in my regular lineup.  I grabbed Ronnie Brown on the chance that if McCoy goes down, Ronnie could suddenly become a big point getter.  I also took a flyer on good old Donovan McNabb.  My logic was he now has a good offense around him plus he should have a huge chip on his shoulder after his embarrassing season last year.  He’ll have a hard time though bumping Matt Ryan out as my starter.

During the party I sampled some of pretty much everything.  My body isn’t very used to eating large amounts of junk food.  I felt pretty gross.  In addition it seemed like my illness symptoms ratcheted up somewhat during the draft.  I was blowing my nose and coughing more than I had been for a few days.

The draft wrapped up around 10pm, not bad considering we had 14 rounds of picks and didn’t get started until 7:20 or so.  Despite my encouragement of owners to take some food with them almost all of it remained.

My ass was dragging but I HAD to get stuff back in order before bed because the cleaning chicks are supposed to show up today for the first time in a couple months.  Ali had dozed off in the bedroom and was not thrilled to have to help me in the process.  I worked as quickly as possible to get the unwelcome chore over and done with.  On top of it all I had to do some data work for yet another race we are timing Saturday after the clean up was done.

By the time my head hit the pillow it was after midnight.  I woke up this morning feeling miserable.  Not only was I tired and feeling guilty from eating all that shitty food I was gimping around on very sore legs and ass due to first time in a month squats on Wednesday.

As I mentioned, we have a race to time Saturday.  I am hoping the rest of our Labor Day weekend is not too strenuous.  Yea of course I have stuff I need to get done but the list isn’t double digits long at least.  Ali is off work today so hopefully she gets a head start on the normal crap.

I heard on the radio today that many schools no longer teach children how to write in cursive. WTF?  What would be the logic behind that?  We want kids to print everything?  Granted there is very little pen and paper writing going on in the world anymore but to me learning cursive is still a viable skill set.  Maybe I am just old.

Last night was my last chance to film an attempt for this month’s Bar-barian pull up challenge.  I wasn’t even going to bother based on how I had been feeling this week with my gym work outs.  I felt pretty weak doing my pull up sets, the most I managed was 17 reps, 4 short of my 21 rep high.  I figured I would try anyway, nothing to lose.

I was amazed that I managed to actually beat my best number by one rep, struggling mightily to get 22 reps.  I’m not quite sure where that came from.  The last 4 or 5 reps involved me hanging around on the bar a long time while my back muscles recovered for a few seconds, it was tough.  I was very happy to end the month on a good note.  As a point of reference my 22 reps only put me mid-pack in the contest, the winner knocked out a sky high 37 reps.

My participation in the Bar-barians forum has really helped my training.  Seeing 14 year old kids up to 50+ year olds still pushing themselves does something to help keep the ball of motivation rolling.  Reversing the normal downward curve of age related performance from a downward to an upward arc is something I enjoy trying to do.  Sure in the end the grim reaper will claim me just as anyone else but I can guarantee I will go down kicking and swinging all the way.

Last night I sold my old Trek via Craigslist.  I got $100 less than my asking price but it was still enough to take a good chunk out of what I spent on my new wheels.  The guy that bought it is just looking to get into triathlons so I passed along whatever knowledge I could to get him started in the right way.  It’s nice to have one less bike in the garage.  I want to get rid of two more yet.  One more will be easy since it is mine, the other will take some work since it is Ali’s.

Tonight I am hosting the draft for our fantasy football league.  This will be the third year in a row I am hosting it.  Despite the far less than convenient geographic location of our house for the other league owners, they have actually requested I keep hosting it because of the other perks.

I do a good job of geeking out the event, providing wi-fi access to all owners and connecting remote owners via a remote video Skype connection that is displayed on the big 73 inch tv with sound coming over the Bose surround system.  I also rearrange the great room with two tables and put out a decent spread of food.

I am actually leaving work early today so I can get home and begin the preparations which are pretty extensive.  Should be a fun night.  Ironically, despite my hospitality I will be picking last of all the teams for the second consecutive year.

Remember 25 years ago when Columbia House was pushing cassettes and cd’s on you?  They had these “deals” where you got 10 cd’s or cassette’s for the ridiculous price of 99 cents.  All you had to do was sign an agreement that you would buy cd’s for the next 20 years at full boat price.  Ok maybe not that long but you get the idea.

Well evidently Columbia House is trying to reintroduce that fail concept some 25 years later with DVD’s this time.  This is an epic fail.  Dvd’s themselves are on their way out, hell even Blu-Ray has lost it’s lustre.  People finally have realized that filling their shelves with dvd’s/cd’s is stupid and does nothing but line them up to be a future Hoarders subject.  On demand/streaming is the way everything is going, for Columbia House to not realize this is hilarious.

If you would like to see this refreshed scam, go here and get it on the deal now! Or don’t….

So despite my lack of hope of  any sort of permanent repair for my Forerunner 201, I gave it one more shot yesterday.  I unbent the one button contact that I damaged and then used a slightly different angle to snap the two halves together.  It worked.  I no longer have to keep my thumb pressed on right side of the watch for it to run.  All I need to do is pick up some thin silicone sealant to reseal the watch and I think it will be good to go.

I was quite surprised at my success.  I had pretty much written off the watch to the GPS graveyard.

Last night Ali and I went out on our bikes for a bit.  I wanted to give my new Trek 2.1 an extended test ride.  The bike feels light and fast.  Because it is a big frame I am curious how the geometry will work out if I put my tri bars on it.  It feels like I have a long way to go down to get to the handlebars.

We were out on the road right around dusk.  Riding the roads during that time of day meant the bugs were out in full force.  As Ali and cruised down the road we had a constant barrage of bugs bouncing off our bodies.  We tried to keep our mouths closed.

This morning I made an unwelcome trip back to the dermatologist.  I had a couple spots on my body that were looking suspicious.  One of them was right in front of my right ear.  I had something removed from the same spot on the left side a few years ago.

The doctor took a sample of the area for testing.  He also took pictures of other spots on my body to keep an eye on, well his female assistant did.  There was an awkward moment where the woman was circling me taking pictures as I stood there in my boxer shorts.  I said to her, trying to be helpful, “Is there anything else you want to take pictures of?”.  She just paused for a second and smirked.  I immediately realized how that sounded.  Oh well.

So I returned to the gym yesterday, the first time since last Tuesday.  As expected I felt quite weak but it was at least good to get back into the gym environment.  I followed up with my post work mini-workout.  I only got 15 pull ups during it but again, it is a by product of the recovery process.  I skipped the wall handstand hold as I didn’t feeling like having a waterfall of snot pouring out of my nose.

Ali bounced back from her Saturday run problems by putting in an hour on her bike trainer and following it up with 20 minutes on the treadmill.  She said it wasn’t easy but at least she was doing it.

When we finished up our 20 mile jaunt through Ireland I noticed that my trusty Garmin GPS looked like it had some moisture under the glass.  I figured it was just a by product of the horrible, wind driven, cold, rainy conditions it was subjected to for 4+ hours.

Well once we got back to the states I tried to fire the watch up and was surprised it didn’t turn on.  I just figured the battery was drained so I charged it up.  It appeared to charge normally, flashing the BATTERY CHARGING message on the screen.  Imagine my surprise after pulling it off the charger and it still refuses to turn on.

Well at that point I put two and two together and assumed somehow the moisture I saw in the watch in Ireland was the cause of the problem.  Of course the easy thing to do would be to toss the watch in the trash and get a new one since the 201 is an old model that uses less sensitive electronics that sometimes loses your position when you are under things like trees.  Well the watch has been my companion for a number of my toughest physical challenges of my life so I decided it was at least worth a shot at fixing.

Trying to disassemble the watch was an exercise in futility.  The case was obviously a snap together deal which was probably sealed with some sort of waterproof sealant.  I pryed all over the thing with a thin blade screwdriver but was unable to have any luck cracking it open.  I gave up and turned to the internet, looking for advice.

I was lucky and found a thread of Garmin owners that also were struggling to open their 201’s albeit a thread that was 3 years old at this point.  One poster talked about a tiny slot he found where he could start popping the case apart.  I saw the spot he was talking about but I had no luck getting anything split.  Then further down the thread I saw another post describing a brute force method.  Put the watch in a vice.

Specifically, the recommendation was to put the watch in the vice so the bottom half is between the jaws and then GENTLY applying pressure.  I was a bit skeptical of this method but I had nothing to lose.  I wedged the watch in my table vice and gave it a little tug, the case popped open almost immediately, wow that was easy.

So my problem seemed to be the power button was simply unresponsive.  People said they fixed similar issues by just disconnecting and reconnecting the mylar connectors on the logic board.  I did this and then snapped the watch back together.  The button still didn’t work correctly.

I futzed around with it for awhile disassembling (the watch popped apart easily now) and reassembling the watch.  I discovered that when the watch was together, if I applied slight pressure to the right of the display the watch would turn on and operate normally.  However if I removed the pressure the watch would turn off a few moments later.

On that side of the watch there was a contact pad where the electronics are connected to the battery.  I thought that perhaps if I wedged a small piece of cardboard under this pad to slightly elevate it I could cause enough pressure to rig the watch.  It didn’t work.

In the process of taking the watch apart and back together a couple dozen times I wound up inadvertently damaging the mylar connector that the buttons make contact with when it got pinched in between the halves of the case.  I plan to make one more attempt to McGyver the watch but I think a replacement is unavoidable at this point.  I certainly don’t want a watch that could cut out without notice in the middle of a ride/run.

Part of me wants to get another 201 but it would make little sense to do so with the old tech.  Hell it still sync’s to the puter via a SERIAL connection. Even so, I may keep the 201 tucked away in my desk drawer for safekeeping,  just because.