Archives January 2012

Well the horrible idle with a warm engine start problem has been getting worse and worse with my Tacoma.  When it happens (when restarting the truck with a warm engine), I basically have to two foot the truck with one foot on the gas and brake to keep it running.  It can sputter and surge like mad when it is in this state.

I have done a lot of research on this and it seems like the culprit is pretty clear, the idle air control valve.  Evidently it is a very common issue for this to stick due to carbon build up after a number of years.  There are two options, remove it and clean the valve thoroughly or replace it.  From what I have read, simply cleaning the valve normally fixes the problem and buying another one will cost roughly $200 so I plan to go the former route.

Getting to the IAC valve requires removing the throttle body from the intake of the truck.  The procedure isn’t hard besides removal of some brass screws that I read are very easy to strip.  The best solution to avoid stripping screws is to use an impact screw driver, which I don’t have.  I plan on getting one, they are less than $30.  That is a small price to pay to avoid the hassle stripped screws can bring.

I had another juiced dinner last night.  It consisted of two roma tomatoes, two celery stalks, 3 good sized carrots, some left over lettuce from our garden and a good handful of spinach.  Ali also made us salads.  I was good to go.  The taste is fine, removing ginger from the mix was a large improvement.  I’ll probably do something similar tonight, it just isn’t that bad.

Last night after work I made an attempt at setting a new PR for a wall handstand hold.  The longest I ever held was 70 seconds and that was done a long time ago, probably early 2010.  I haven’t been working handstands recently at all since my focus is the BBR’s.  Well I figured my low body weight might allow me to increase the hold time.  I stayed on my hands for more than 75 seconds and to be honest I might have been able to squeeze out 5 or 6 seconds more. Sweet.

I smiled when I saw a Ron Paul political sign was placed at the end of our street.  The slogan on the poster was “Why change the dealer when you can change the game?”  There is no doubt the game needs to change.

I heard last night that this current congress has gotten the least done of any congress in history, despite being in session as much if not more than past years congress.  Of course this is the end result of the crippling polarization between the two political parties.  In the big picture the winner in this quagmire of course is the rich, since no movement means the policies in place that have helped the disgustingly wealthy get obscenely wealthier for the past decade + remain firmly in place.

So I received our new Breville juicer late last week.  We did a small test run with it, first juicing some oranges and then apples.  Both fruit juices came out very tasty with an almost creamy like texture from the high speed juicing process.  Cleaning up the juicer afterward was pretty straightforward and easy to do.  The biggest hassle is making sure the stainless steel strainer basket with it’s tiny, tiny holes is clean.  On Friday evening during my Sam’s trip I bought some juicing supplies, picking up large containers of apples, blackberries, carrots, tomatoes and celery.

Over the course of the 3 day weekend we had varying degrees of success with our juicing efforts.  It will take some trial and error to determine what we do and don’t like.  For example I put a piece of ginger root, something that is included with many juicing recipes, about the size of my thumb into the juicer.  It made the juice that also included tomato, celery, and carrots taste absolutely awful.  I choked down all but the last sip or two but I was literally gagging on it at the end.

When Ali and I first discussed getting a juicer it was with the intent of trying a 10 day juice fast.  Well after three days of juicing I think we are adjusting our goal based on what we have run into.

Despite being relatively easy to clean, the entire juicing process is very time consuming.  In addition to the juicing and juicer cleaning process you also have to prepare the raw materials before juicing them by either washing them, trimming, skinning or any combination of the three.

To make appreciable amounts of juice requires large amounts of raw materials.  I bet in total we spent $70-$80 just on fruits and veggies for juicing over the weekend.  If you were doing nothing but juice 24/7 you are looking at huge dollars.

So anyway I think our current adjusted plan will be a mixture of juicing with conventional healthy eating.  I had juice for dinner the past two nights and it didn’t bother me much.  If I mix in juice as my “meal” on weeknights where I otherwise would be popping a processed frozen meal in the microwave I think that is a very solid trade off.

It is still very much a work in progress but regardless I think it is a very positive step towards better nutrition.  I even packed almond milk in my lunch box instead of my normal skim milk.

On Friday I mentioned how I realized that my SSR had been lowered from it’s stock height.  I also said I was going to see if I could track down Eye Ball Customs, the place that evidently did the customizations.  I did a quick search for them but did not turn up anything that looked like what I expected.

So just for the hell of it I threw the question out on the SSRFanatics forum, asking if anyone heard of the place. Within a few hours somebody responded back with a web site as well as a Facebook page.  On that page was a photo album titled 2005 SSR, LS2 6 Speed.

When I looked at the pictures it became pretty obvious this was my truck with the low profile and silver bars in the trunk which are non-stock.  I sent an email to the guy, hoping to hear back some history on the truck and exactly what was customized on it.

Over the weekend I put the SSR up on ramps to take a couple pictures of it’s belly so the forum members could possibly help me identify any other custom work that was done.  One of those pictures was called out by a forum member as a side effect of the lowering and a bad one at that.  Evidently the panhard bar has a slight bend in it.  Evidently when a vehicle is lowered this bar is normally replaced with an adjustable variety since the stock bar will be a bit too long.  Well this wasn’t done and the bent bar is the end result.  I don’t think it is something I have to rush out and fix tomorrow but it is on the list of to do’s.

So two of the three days of our long weekend were eaten up by a lot of half marathon duties.  Ali went down to the running store where early packet pick up was held Thursday, Friday and Saturday for most of the day.  I told Ali while she was there on Saturday I would bust ass around the house to get everything done.

Not only did all the chores get done but some axillary items did as well.  I finally took down the outside Christmas lights.  Taking them down myself isn’t nearly as bad as putting them up myself would be.  I worked diligently and had them all down in probably an hour or so.  The spools that the new LED lights come on make the storage chore much more organized and easier.  I sort of hated to take them down, I really liked having our house/trees/fence lit up, regardless of the date n the calendar.

The other chore involved fixing some dog damage.  For some reason Sadie decided to paw at the screen on the lanai, putting a rip in one of the lower panels.  Subsequently she discovered she fit her chubby 65 pound body through the rip, creating an impromptu dog door to the outside world.

So I spent another hour or so replacing that section with super screen, she won’t be ripping THAT section again although she has another 12-15 she could choose from.  Ali and I really scolded Sadie to try to make sure she understood that ripping screens was not an approved behavior.

I am getting pretty good at screen panel replacement.  The new section is tight as a drum.

So I headed down to the running store late Saturday afternoon to join Ali.  I brought the SSR with the top down even though the temps were quite cool, in the 60’s.  I found that putting the side windows up and turning the heat on made this situation very tolerable.

I brought a printer with so we could print the registration lists on the spot.  By the time I got there registration was winding down.  We wound up with 1980 people registered for the race, about 50 less than last year.

So Saturday night we got everything ready to go.  I was double and triple checking my mental check list to make sure I had everything done and packed.  This race is not one where I want to get caught with my pants down.

The half marathon starts very early because of the long distance.  The 7 AM start time translated to a 3:45 AM alarm for Ali and I so we got on site by 5.  It was cold Sunday morning, in the upper 40’s.  Ali had on three or four layers and was still cold.  I had on three and was ok but that was mostly because I was on the move leading up to the race setting up equipment.

This was the first race we were using our new inflatable finish line, it looked great.  There was one drawback, the fan/motor that is used to keep the arch inflated was loud, especially if you were set up right in front of it which my table originally was.  Moving my table about 10 feet past the finish line seemed to make the noise level more tolerable.

This race is the primary reason we bought the second set of timing equipment to allow us to provide a chip start time for runners.  The advantage of a chip start with a big race like this is runners are able to see both their gun time (time the race officially starts) and compare it to their chip time, the time it took them to get up across the start mats to the end of the race.  With this many people it could take someone as long as 1-2 minutes before they actually cross the start line.

I had all of the equipment set up well ahead of time and had it up and ready to go.  There was a power problem (more stupid timers that kill exterior outlet power) at the start line that killed the PA system about 2/3 of the way into the national anthem.  The runners improvised by singing the last couple verses themselves, it was cool.

We had the start mats right after some small islands that jutted out into the road, forcing the runners to condense before they crossed the mats.  The timing box was ringing non-stop as thousands of feet crossed the mats, everything seemed to be working as planned. However when I imported the file of start times I noticed something weird.

I only had around 1325 start times.  With almost 2000 runners registered it made no sense to be missing that many times, even with the normal 10-15% no show rate.  After the race I did some field testing at home with the start mats.  It seemed like the weakest field strength exists right along the left edge, the area that probably had the highest density of all from all of the runners getting merged at that spot.  Oh well live and learn.

I utilized the second set of timing gear at the finish line as well.  I laid one of the mats about 50-75 feet before the official finish line.  This was connected to a laptop that was in front of our race announcer.  It allowed him to instantly have the names of finishing runners pop up for him.  In years past we relied on a manual system where he used a two way radio with spotters to call out bib numbers that he then had to try to quickly key into the system to get the runner’s name.

With the old way when big waves of runners came in it was impossible to keep up with the names.  With this new system I don’t think he missed a single finisher, big improvement.

My 3 layers of clothing didn’t help me too much as I sat around at the finish line.  After awhile I felt chilled to the bone.  I snagged a cup of coffee to help combat the chill.

Ali ran the race as well despite being very negative about it going in.  In the past month she had not stuck to her original intentions of training well for the race, including running further than half marathon distance to make the actual race feel better.  I reminded her that going into a race with a negative attitude pretty much guarantees a negative outcome.

I have experience first hand with not being all that trained for something but still performing relatively well just because I decided I wanted to perform well.  Sometimes this simple truth is lost on Ali. Your head has to be right.

Ali decided to run with Christy the entire race, helping Christy get her best half marathon time to date of 2:22 something.  Ali originally had talked of shooting for that 2 hour milestone.  After the race Ali found me and I congratulated her on the finish.  Later she commented that I didn’t seem as enthusiastic as I should be.  I tried to explain to her that I always support her running races but my view of what a race represents apparently is different from hers.

To me a race is THE time that you push, push as hard as your body allows you to push.  If you aren’t interested in doing that I don’t understand why you are even paying to do a race unless you are more interested in the swag than the actual act of racing.

Now of course everyone is entitled to their own viewpoint of what a race should be, I just expressed where I was coming from, and why that attitude prevents me from gushing over finishing versus racing.  It’s just the way I am wired. I am proud for Ali for being able to run 13.1 miles, even without solid training leading up to it.  I just am not going to pee down her back and tell her it’s raining, if you know what I mean.

Michelle, whom I didn’t even see before the race turned in a fantastic time for her, setting a PR, finishing just under the two hour mark.  According to Michelle she hadn’t been training all that hard either.  Ali and Christy thought she had to be doing some closet training.  I think she just decided she was going to do it. Michelle is sort of like me in that regard.

So the last timed runner came across at something like 3:34.  Post race I had several timing issues to work on, most of which were the result of human error which is unavoidable with a race of this size.  By the time we were packed up and out of there it was around 11 am.

When we got home I had a ton to do of course.  Ali helped me get the chips accounted for, we were missing roughly 7 or 8 of them. After eating lunch she headed back to the bedroom for a pretty much all afternoon nap, she was understandably beat.

I was busy with various race related duties for the majority of the afternoon, probably only finishing up around 4. I was so tired by the time Sunday evening rolled around, it was ridiculous.

The main reason I busted ass Saturday was so our Monday could be free.  It allowed us to take the dogs back to Bird Rookery Swamp.  I was excited for Ali to see it.  The dogs were so excited as we approached, Nicki was crying and jumping around the van.

Sadie didn’t wait long till she dropped a big deuce on the path leading to the boardwalk.  We didn’t bring bags since I knew there weren’t any trash cans on the trail and it is a swamp after all, there is poo.  Regardless I didn’t want to leave her pile of stink right by the path.  I found a stick and played an impromptu game of poo golf.  I would get the stick behind a turd and “golf” it into the water.  I had one shot that carried quite well. Ali thought it looked pretty funny, which I am sure it did.

It didn’t take long till Ali saw why I raved about how cool the place was.  The dogs were happy to lead the way, loving every moment of it, even with being tethered to their extend-a-leashes.  We stopped at the picnic table and ate our PB sandwiches while the girls sat under the table.  The cooler temps compared to the prior week made all that walking more bearable for them.  We went slightly deeper into the trail than when I went solo. We are hoping we can increase our distance slightly each time we go to get the dogs more exercise.

Ali took a bunch of great pictures along the way.  It is just so quiet and beautiful there.  We saw lots of birds but little else wildlife along the way, until we returned to the parking lot.  As we were getting back in the van I spotted a HUGE gator in the lettuce lake facing the lot. It may be the biggest gator I have seen in person in the wild since moving to Florida.

We left the swamp anxious to return on a regular basis, it’s so awesome.

During the afternoon I made my first normal mode attempt at this month’s Bar-barian forums challenge. It is 5 sets of maximum rep diamond push ups with no more than a minute break in between sets.

Diamond push ups are more difficult than conventional push ups, you put your hands together so they form a diamond between them.  Having your hands that tight means you are utilizing more of your triceps and less of your chest.  With my long monkey-like arms it is not a very easy exercise for me.  I managed to squeeze out 105 total reps across the 5 sets.  It was an average number that landed me in the bottom third of people in the contest so far.  I am hoping to give it another shot and bump up my reps a bit.

Ali and I then hopped in the SSR to go get dog food and more juicing supplies. It was my second stop at Sam’s of the weekend.  We are hoping to hit a local farmer’s market next weekend to compare variety, quality and pricing versus Sam’s Club.

Almost every night before bed I have been plowing through 1.5 to 2.5 episodes of 24.  I am really enjoying the show.  Just to put it in perspective, even though I have the most current seasons of Breaking Bad and Dexter on dvd (courtesy of Randall)  I have decided I am going to finish season 1 of 24 before cracking those open.  That is some high praise.

On days I bring the SSR I park it in the garage which is a good 150 yards from our office.  On the way out to the garage I was walking behind a woman that literally had her face in her smart phone the ENTIRE way.  I had to snicker when I got behind the exact same woman on the way back and once again she was locked into her phone, relying only on her peripheral vision to make sure she didn’t run into something.

I don’t know, as much of a tech lover as I am this sort of behavior really bugs me, almost as much as the fckin idiots I see blatantly texting while they are behind the vehicle of a moving vehicle.

I mean really, is it that important to remain connected to the matrix at every possible moment?  Sometimes progress and technological advances wind up being just the opposite when common courtesy, safety and sense is lost in their utilization.

I just realized at lunch that my SSR appears to have been lowered compared to a stock model.  This realization came to me when I compared the side profile of my truck to another county employee’s SSR which was parked right across from mine.

My car is badged as being from “Eye Ball Customs” but I thought the only customization that was done was the fancy pin stripe and maybe the chroming of the wheels.  Now I am wondering what other work was done on the car. (exhaust, cam?)

I think I am going to try to track down the place and see if they have any records of what exactly was done to my car.  I’d really like to know.  I know my car originated from Texas, I guess I’ll start there.

When I got home last night I had a package from Brooklyn, I was very excited to get this.  One of the core Bar-barians, Zef (aka. Zakavelli, Devon) sent me a genuine Bar-barians shirt.  He did this as a thanks for the work I have been putting into the Bar-barian forum with the monthly challenges.  It was a very nice gesture.

Originally I didn’t plan to even wear the shirt until I could at least complete the old BBR’s, after all the shirts are earned, not bought.  However Zef told me he would be honored if I wore it in one of my upcoming videos so of course I will be happy to oblige him.  Also those that are familiar with the Bar-barians will immediately notice the logo is in silver.  If you complete the requirements you get a shirt with a GOLD logo. 🙂

The shirt immediately vaulted to the top of my most prized article of clothing list, right up there with my Tough Mudder gear and Crossfit Clitheroe hoodie.  It will reside on a hanger in my closet, never to see the inside of any drawer.

Getting the shirt puts even more fuel on my internal fire to push to hit my goal.

Last night I attended a “meeting” regarding new FEMA flood maps in our area.  This has been an issue for over a half decade.  Basically FEMA has been pushing to rezone/update the flood maps in our area for a long time since the old data was inaccurate.  If they would have been allowed to move ahead unchallenged, 50,000 + people would have suddenly been dumped into a flood zone designation which would REQUIRE the homeowner to buy additional flood insurance.  Well it’s required as long as you are carrying a mortgage on your house.

Well the county has actually done a good job of running interference on this, appealing the new maps and getting FEMA to postpone the change while additional imaging of the ground was collected and provided.

Well finally it was announced we were in the final countdown before the new maps hit.  The county had preliminary maps on their web site so residents could look up their property.  I wasn’t thrilled when I saw our house was redesignated as an AH zone, a designation that would require us to buy flood insurance.

Even with that designation I had a wildcard.  If I was willing to pay for a survey elevation of our house pad, which is 3-4 feet above the surrounding ground level and then file some paperwork with FEMA I could still be exempt from paying for the insurance.  It would be a pain in the ass for sure but worth it in the long run.

So anyway, I went to the meeting, which was really just a glorified flood map convenience store.  You walked in, gave them your address and they looked up your property with the very latest proposed maps, even newer than what I saw online.

The guy that was looking up my property said the county had just gotten FEMA to accept even newer, more detailed lidar images of the ground levels in our area.  These images allowed the county to prove that the house pads were safely out of the flood zone without a separate elevation survey.  As a result my new flood zone designation was now X, a designation meaning there was only a .2% chance the property could flood.  Basically if our house floods it’s pretty much the end of the world anyway so who cares.

I returned home and gave Ali the good news, the last thing I am looking to do is pick up another insurance bill.

This weekend will be very busy, working in house work around the Naples Half Marathon, our biggest race of the year.  My role is never more on center stage than it is for this race.  Not only do the race results determine large cash prizes, I will be providing results to various local media outlets and other services tied into the race.  It is a pretty big deal.

This year for the first time we will be chip starting the race, setting up timing mats for the 2000+ runners to cross at the start.  I also plan to utilize the second timing system to pop up the names of runners as they head to the finish line to simplify things for our race announcer.

It will be a hectic few hours on Sunday morning for sure.  Ali will be both working the race and running in it.  She has been doing pretty well with her training, hopefully she can improve from last year’s time.

I still hope to wedge in some fun things this weekend since I have Monday off for MLK day.  In addition to chewing up some more episodes of 24 I have Cowboys & Aliens in a Netflix sleeve at home.  It also would be fun if I got to take Ali back to Bird Rookery Swamp with the dogs so she can see firsthand what all the fuss is about.

So yesterday for some reason the inspiration hit me to create a second blog, utilizing the wordpress.com account I have had for over 5 years but never used.  The blog is intended to be specialized, dealing pretty much exclusively with health and what I do to maintain mine, especially body weight exercising.

If you would like to check out Dufisthenics, you can click here.

It is going to be a bit of a challenge to handle possible duplication since I don’t want to have to cover the same topics twice.

For this reason I think I will just be linking to posts on the other blog from here if they are already covered.  An example is the juicer we got yesterday which I talked about in Dufisthenics.   We got the same Breville juicer we saw in Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, it was very highly rated on Amazon.

The unit seems well made and easy to clean.  This weekend I plan to grab some fruit/produce in bulk to give it a try.  We don’t want to embark on our trial juice fast until after Ali runs the half marathon this weekend.

Setting up the second blog on wordpress.com has me thinking about moving my main blog there as well.  My checkered history with IX webhosting is well documented, I always feel like I am running with no net when it comes to data security with them. Plus I still regularly have issues with poor performance that have become so common place that I pretty much just ignore them at this point.

I liked some of the additional features I got on WordPress.com including some features that I have to rely on add ons to get with my stand alone installation.  Plus the reliability of my content would surely go up dramatically. It was ridiculously easy to get the blog up and running complete with a cool theme, Facebook and Twitter hooks and much more.

On the downside you do lose some of the add on flexibility you have with a stand alone installation, you can’t just throw any add on in there.  There also are some size limitations and customization limitations that are overcome by upgrading to a Pro account which of course costs some money, not much though.  Who knows, I may pull the trigger.  I will be interested in seeing what sort of traction Dufisthenics grabs.

As predicted by others, I am hooked on 24.  I turned it off last night in the midst of episode 7 around 11:30.  As compelling as I am finding the show it is not very beneficial to my sleep needs.  The past couple days I have been waking up in a Zombie like haze.

So I picked Ali up at the airport from her trip to PA for my niece’s birthday.  As much as Ali enjoys seeing the kids she also enjoys coming back to the warm comfort of home.  I took the party van so the dogs could hitch a ride.  Of course they were very excited to see Ali.  Sadie perched herself on Ali’s lap for the entire ride home.

So I had to fast today for my blood draw for work.  I was sort of not looking forward to it, thinking it would be more of pain than it actually was.  I really like how the county handles their health insurance with employees, using a reward system, something I would love to see implemented on a widespread basis.

Basically they check your vitals and do a blood draw to determine you health level.  If your numbers come back shitty which surely many do, you have two options.  Do nothing about it and get thrown on the insurance plan with the worst coverage and highest out of pocket costs or go through some education courses to hopefully help you get on the right track.  If you jump through these hoops you can still be put on the higher level coverage plan.

When you think about it that is really the way it should be.  Invest in your health and be rewarded, abuse your health and get punished.  Instead the way it works for most of the country is abuse your health, do nothing and abuse your health some more.  Then when your health problems become so bad that you can’t even get insurance you wind up just laying your big fat ass on the backs of the rest us to eat the unpaid medical expenses you create.

Ron Paul scored a very solid 2nd place finish in the New Hampshire primary.  His campaign definitely has some momentum.  I like a lot of what Ron Paul is about.  He is honest, smart and I agree with his positions on a number of issues.

There are some large issues I am not on board with as well.  He is very much into letting people be more responsible for their own existence, both home and abroad. Ideologically, of course I agree with but I think if he followed through with some of his ideas when it comes to public programs there could be a lot of collateral damage.

If I take a typical conservative viewpoint where I am only concerned with myself and myself alone, I am doing well so I shouldn’t be concerned about what happens to those less fortunate. No matter who is in the White House, I more than likely will be just fine either way.  Luckily I am able to look beyond my front yard when it comes to issues.

Well anyway for the first time in years I will actually be participating in the Republican primary in Florida since yes, I am still a registered Republican.  I’ll be throwing Ron a vote.  Above all I like someone who is willing to turn the apple cart upside down, this country certainly needs it.

So when Ali is out of town I leave work an hour early so I can get home to let the dogs out.  Getting home early meant I had some extra daylight so I decided to put it to good use outside in my bar park.

I decided to dig out my rings, I wanted to give ring muscle ups a shot.

When I was on the long quest for the elusive muscle up I did some work trying to do the movement on rings since some people said that in some ways it is easier to get your first MU on them.  The thought process is when you do a muscle up on rings you don’t have a bar in the way of your chest blocking the transition.

This is definitely true however the ring MU (when done without massive kipping) is also more of a power movement than a swinging bar muscle up.  I never was able to do one in my training before, partially because I guess I lacked the necessary power.

Just like a bar muscle up, technique is an important aspect of doing the same movement on rings.  You have to grab the rings with a strong “false grip” which basically means rotating your grip so that your wrist is almost on top of the rings.  Doing this allows your wrist to be in the proper angle to do the top part of the movement.  In a swinging bar muscle up you can get away with not using a false grip because your momentum will naturally rotate your grip around the bar for you.

The actually pulling movement is dramatically different than a bar muscle up.  With a bar muscle up your elbows are far in front of your body and you are pulling on a stationary object.  With muscle ups on rings you start with your elbows forward and palms facing one another.  As you pull up you are also rotating your hands outward at the same time to get into position for the pushing part of the motion.  There are a lot of moving parts.

So anyway, I got my rings suspended from my high bar and after loosening up a bit , gave it a try.  My first 3 or 4 attempts I was close but I got stuck right at the transition point.  I was a bit disappointed, figuring if I can do 7 muscle ups on the bar I should be able to get at least one on rings.

So I took a breather and tried to visualize what I needed to do, strong pull and imagine getting my shoulders over my wrists.  I reapplied the chalk to my hands and gave it another shot.  I did it!  I was pysched and went inside to grab my Flip cam because of course if it isn’t on video, it didn’t happen.

I actually shot two attempts. After watching back the first one I realized that I did a little bit of a hop into it off the ground which makes the attempt less than 100% legitimate.  Well I couldn’t have that so I went again, this time making sure I had my feet off the ground before pulling up. I was able to pull that off as well, I was pysched.

I found that the ring muscle ups put a ton of torque on my elbows and forearms, I could really feel it afterwards.  Of course I need to use moderation on the rings, the last thing I want to do is go too hard too fast and hurt myself.

I am excited to have conquered another body weight movement that for a long time seemed so elusive. Next step will be stringing a few together.

Yesterday I started tracking my progress in my daily GUTS routine.  GUTS stands for the guts of the BBR’s which are dips, pull ups and push ups.  Everyday at the gym for the past couple weeks I have been starting my work outs by doing one set max’s of dips, pull ups and push ups back to back.  My plan is if I can get the guts up to BBR levels, the 5 MU’s on the front and back of it will more or less take care of themselves.  If you want to see where I am at you can always use this link.

Last night I dug into some more 24 episodes.  I think I am up to episode 4 or 5 of season 1.  Yea I can see why people liked the show.  I shouldn’t be hurting for TV content to watch for a long time.

You may recall my ranting on Friday regarding a long scratch I discovered on the right rear quarter panel of the SSR when I got out of the car Friday morning.  I was incensed that some idiot would be so careless as to scratch my pride and joy especially since I am so careful with where I park it in public.  I proclaimed the majority of the population as assholes for their part in this travesty.

So when I got home I just happened to glance at the air compressor that I have tucked in the front corner of the garage.  I typically have it pushed right against the wall to make sure it is out of the way of the SSR which gets parked on the same side.  Well I noticed that the compressor wasn’t up against the wall like it normally is, it was cocked a little bit, hmmm.

I continued my observation, bending down and looking at the handle of the compressor, which was pointed out into the main garage space.  Hmmm there are two areas where something obviously rubbed against it!  The light was dawning on me, could I have really done this myself??  Well the tape measure verified my stupidity, when I saw the height of the handle matched the height of the scratches on the truck.  Mother f, I am the asshole!

I couldn’t believe I scraped the air compressor, to do so would mean I had to be VERY close to the wall when I backed in over the weekend. I assume because I had the windows up and the stereo loud I hadn’t even heard the noise of paint being removed.  Damn now I was really pissed, at myself.

I immediately took steps to prevent this from ever occurring again, wrapping the handle of the air compressor in pipe insulation and duct tape.  I also turned it so the handle is now pointing towards the front of the garage where it is even less likely to ever make contact with the SSR.

I had a very unconventional Friday evening, instead of relaxing while eating pizza and watching recorded Tivo content I spent the majority of the evening playing mechanic once again.  I had picked up Mom’s Rav 4 the night before to do some additional adjustment on the rear brakes.

I decided I would do a live broadcast of the brake work, you can watch it here if your life is totally devoid of anything better to do.  So I started on the passenger side first.  After removing the drum I thought it would be a good idea to step on the brake pedal to see if  could better hear the spring noise mom was talking about.

I pressed on the brakes a few times and heard nothing so I pressed on the pedal even harder and then I did hear something.  It turns out that noise was the one pad slipping off the adjuster bolt.  Pushing that hard allowed the brake shoes to expand much further than they would while inside a drum, causing it to pop off.  Damn it.

So to get everything back together correctly I had no choice but to take the brake apart again.  Luckily my experience from a couple weeks prior made the process less scary even though it still is a bit of a pain in the ass to get it all hooked back together correctly.

After getting everything connected and mounted I was able to start adjusting the brake shoes outward using the star wheel.  It was a trial and error process where I would expand the pads a bit, put the drum on, pull the emergency brake a few times to seat the pads and then see how it felt.

After getting the passenger side done I moved to the driver side to repeat the process.  This was the side that it seemed like the spring noise was originating from when I drove the vehicle.  I carefully inspected everything but did not see anything that looked suspicious.  I adjusted the shoes outward, put the tire back on and took it out for a test drive.

I noticed an immediate difference in the way the brakes felt.  Originally I had thought I would also need to bleed the brakes because mom was complaining they felt soft.  Well that feel was probably due to the rear shoes barely even touching the drums because they were too retracted.  With the shoes pushed out the pedal felt much firmer and grabbed higher.  The mysterious spring noise had also disappeared in the adjustment process which I was glad about.

Adjusting the rear brakes also corrected the parking brake issue where despite pulling the handle as far as it will go the parking brake didn’t feel like it was securely engaged.  After the adjustment the handle causes the brakes to grab securely.

After I finished with mom’s brakes I decided to take a whack at cleaning up my self imposed SSR damage using Scratch-X, a product I have had good success with in the past.  After about 10 minutes of elbow grease I was able to greatly improve the appearance of the scratch.  If you get your nose down there you can still see it but if I don’t point out to you it would remain invisible. The two vehicle projects were a rewarding way to kick off my weekend.

Saturday morning I planned to go do the club group run.  I had originally pegged that I would like to run 10 miles.  It was pretty chilly with temps in the 40’s.  I decided to don my UA long sleeve cold gear top that I used for the Mudder.  I wound up running with Michelle and a friend of hers named Katie.  Katie is a little tiny thing but she is a good runner.  I let her set the pace since I wasn’t in the mood to push for any PR’s.

They only planned to do 7 miles.  During the first half of the run I decided I would cut my distance to 7 as well.  Participating in the conversation with the girls was making the distance go down easier.  I figured cutting the 3 miles won’t kill me and I had lots of stuff to do anyway so the extra half hour saved won’t be wasted. We wound up doing the 7 miles at a decent 9:30 pace.  It was a good run.

I had brought the Camry with to the run.  My plan was to take it through the same car wash I took mom’s Rav 4 through before Christmas since they did a pretty damn nice job for $20.  I was bummed to see that they weren’t open when I pulled up to it.  I guess it was sort of dumb of me to assume they would be open at 7:30, oh well.  I hoped that maybe if I got everything done around the house I could come back later and run the car through.

On the drive home I called mom and let her know I would be able to drop her car back off before she had to go into work.  She was surprised I had it all done already.  She tells me repeatedly how she doesn’t like driving my truck so I figured the quicker she got her Rav 4 back, the better.  Plus I had a number of errands to run that I could hit along the way.

So when I got home I asked the girls the magical phrase”do you wanna go for a ride??”  Of course they did but were confused when I directed them into mom’s Rav 4, a vehicle they never rode in before.  I put down the rear sets to allow for more roaming room.  The dogs eventually jumped in with Nicki opting for the rear trunk area and Sadie choosing to ride shotgun, normally her favorite spot.

I hadn’t told mom I was bringing the dogs so she was surprised to have the two of them charging towards her on the lanai when we got there.  I told mom that the brakes felt much better but she was welcome to go take a test drive if she wanted to verify it for herself.  She said she trusted my evaluation.

So I had a number of stops on the way home, the first one was Pet Supermarket to pick up dog food.  As we entered the store one of the women behind the desk said how cute the dogs were and how sad it makes her because they look just like her dog.

Confused, I asked why that made you sad.  The women explained that she had to just put her beloved black lab named Buddy down a week ago.  I asked her what happened.

She said Buddy had bad arthritis for awhile.  She actually had a hip surgery done on the dog try  to alleviate some of his discomfort and pain.  Well even with the surgery Buddy, who was 13, still was having a lot of problems getting around.

She came home from work the one day and found that Buddy had fallen and was having difficulty moving.  The vet told her that Buddy had broken something in his back and was now partially paralyzed.  Well despite this the women was not willing to give up.  She spent the next week taking care of the dog basically being with him full time.  Well when she had to go out eventually to get something she came back and was horrified at what she saw.

Somehow Buddy had managed to drag himself across the floor but wound up getting stuck under some furniture.  The dog was crying loudly as she came in and was in a puddle of his own urine.  She knew she had to put him down despite it literally breaking her heart to do so.

As she described the scene at the vet’s office it started to make me choke up.  She said as Buddy was lying on the table as the medicine was being administered he kept licking the tears off the woman’s face, almost like he was telling her it was ok.  It was so freaking sad…. I simply can’t imagine going through that with our dogs.

After the unexpected tear jerking story at the pet store I continued my errands.  I stopped at Target to grab a foot bath, a  less fancy model than what we bought mom for Christmas.  I want it to soak my feet in epsom salt.  I have read that doing so is a good way to knock out funky toenails of which I have three.  I would really like to clear them up without going the medicinal route.  I heard that stuff has a lot of potential unwanted side effects that I would rather not deal with.

I then walked a few doors down to Staples.  Ali had a coupon that was expiring that day as well as some Staples Rewards dollars to spend.  I walked in not sure I was going to buy.   After some wandering around I came across the monitor section.  It then hit me.

I have my monster 27 inch monitor and a second, 19″ monitor connected to my PC.  The second monitor is conventional 4:3 aspect ratio which has annoyed me due to the decrease in space compared to the wide screen format.   I saw they had a 23″ Acer monitor on clearance for $114, wow, that is cheap.

In my head I came up with a two stage plan.  I attach the 23 incher to my system as the new second screen and then I move my existing 19 incher over to Ali’s computer, giving her the chance to experience how much better it is to have two screens instead of one.  Try it and you will never want to go back.

With the coupon and reward vouchers I walked out of there paying 80 some bucks for a 23″ monitor, damn nice deal.

So when I got home I dug into the meat and potatoes of the housework both inside and out.  In less than two hours I had it all handled.  Early in the afternoon I had the time to drive the Camry back down to the car wash.  Once again I was completely satisfied with the result.  For $20 they do a damn nice job both inside and out (Calypso Car Wash).

While I was waiting for the car to come out I was approached by a young kid that was handing out business cards for a new business that was located right behind the car wash.  They repair small paint chips and scratches.  He said they are running a deal until mid-February where they will go over an entire car for $200.  The SSR immediately came to mind with both the monster scratch I put in the side as well as some other small blemishes I have identified during car washing sessions.  I told the kid he might be hearing from me.

Saturday night I was going to a retirement party for a co-worker of mine.  I was feeling quite tired since I got up at 4:30 to go run.  I figured an attempt at a nap would make sense.  I wasn’t very successful, laying in bed for around an hour being awake more than asleep.  Oh well I guess it was better than nothing.

I had a good time at the party.  Debbie lives in a 55+ community.  A lot of her retired neighbors were in attendance.  It didn’t take long until the party divided into a retired and actively working crowd.  We spent a good portion of the evening out on the lanai huddled around a cool propane fueled fire pit to keep warm in the cool night temperatures.  We outlasted the old people and closed out the party around 11:30 or so.

I woke up to a beautiful day on Sunday, it was so nice outside with cool but not cold temps, bright blue skies and low humidity.  I was looking forward to the day since I knew I already had almost all of the required labor behind me.  The girls and I started off the day with our pretty regular trip to DD.

On the way we passed a number of triathletes.  This weekend some traveling race organizer was putting on their first ever triathlon in our area.  When I first heard of the event months ago it seemed pretty ambitious.  They were putting on basically every possible tri distance including sprint, open, olympic, half Ironman and even the daunting FULL IRONMAN.

I could not believe that they would be able to organize such an event in Naples, especially with the traffic control needs for such long courses.  Well I heard from other local runners that the turnout for the event was not all that great.  I heard somewhere around 600 people signed up in total which is not very much at all if you are breaking it across 5 events.  I heard the Ironman division only had like 20 people in it.

Well I saw first hand that the event did indeed happen based on all the riders I saw on Immokalee Road.  The event managers spent a FORTUNE on traffic control.  Every intersection with a traffic light on Immokalee Road had at least one police man manning it, most had two.  I heard they spent around $40,000 just to pay the sheriff’s office to man the roads, wow.  Doing the math makes it seem impossible that they actually made any money on the race.

On Sunday they were doing the longer distance tri’s, we had bikers going out beyond our street, I am not quite sure how far out towards Immokalee they went.   All I know is the ones I saw looked very, very tired.  The cold weather couldn’t have made for a very enjoyable swim either.  Like I mentioned, the air temps on Saturday morning were in the 40’s.  The gulf water is also quite cold, clicking in at 59 degrees.  I was quite glad I didn’t have the looney idea to participate in the event.

Mid-morning after I downed my extra large cup of coffee, I decided to head outside to my parallel bars to make my first attempt at hard mode of this month’s Bar-barian forum challenge.  Hard mode involves doing 5 sets of max rep dips.  You have a maximum of a scant 45 seconds to rest in between sets.

It was really a tough challenge.  I pushed  myself hard in the first set which made the remaining 4 sets very, very difficult.  When I watched the video back I was bummed out.  I realized that on most of my reps I was not getting full enough extension at the top of the movement, I couldn’t count it as an official attempt.  It was annoying to go through all of that discomfort and not be able to officially count my 80 total reps but at least I burned out my triceps regardless.  They hurt for a good portion of the day.

As I was inside waiting for the video to finish uploading to YouTube I decided to shoot a second video while seated at the desk.  I get some questions regarding my exercise videos so I thought it would be cool to do a quick Q&A talking about some of those questions.  I actually managed to speak rather clearly for the entire session which surprised me.  If you would like to see it click here.  I apologize for the out of synch audio and video later in the clip, not sure what happened there.

A little after lunch I packed the girls back into the van for our second “trip” of the day.  Of course they were very excited.  The drive was very short however, only a couple miles to that preserve Ali and I discovered last week.  I thought it would be fun to go there for a hike with the dogs since they are actually allowed to be there.

When we pulled up there was only one other vehicle in the parking lot and the two people that were in it were just shooting pictures around there, we basically had the place to ourselves.

So we walked down a path to a boardwalk, it looked like a very similar set up to the long winding board walk that cuts through Corkscrew Swamp.  I thought this was entirely cool, we get to enjoy a scene like Corkscrew without having to pay the $10 a head to do so.  On top of that we can take the dogs, how awesome.

Well the boardwalk ended after probably less than a half mile and you are dropped down onto a path, a path surrounded on either side by in your face swamp.

It was a bit of a weird feeling.  When we were up on the boardwalk you felt immersed in the environment while at the same time being somewhat protected by the man made structure.  Once you hit the path you were right at swamp level, free to interact with the surroundings or for the surroundings to interact with you.  I kept in mind the sign at the entrance that depicted some of the wildlife that exists in the preserve including bears, panthers and of course alligators.

Well it didn’t take long at all until that fact was made crystal clear.  A couple hundred yards off the ramp we came upon a large drainage pipe that connected the water that was on either side of the path.  As we approached all of a sudden we hear a loud splash followed by very violent thrashing.  Evidently there was a gator on the bank right by the path and it decided to take off.  Both the dogs and myself were quite startled.

For the remainder of the walk I spent as much time scanning both banks for perspective predators as I did taking in the beautiful scenery.  I actually thought it might be a smart thing to bring a knife with me on our next trip through the swamp.  If something came after me or the dogs I wouldn’t mind having something to tip the scales in my favor as remote of a possibility as that may be.

The dogs were of course loving this adventure.  They soon learned after my repeated corrections that drifting over towards the water edge was a no no. Sadie lead the way for most of the walk out like she normally does.

My plan was to walk about 45 minutes into the preserve before turning around and heading back.  I was quite glad that I decided to wear my backpack complete with water for both myself and the dogs.  Despite the cool start to the day, by mid-afternoon it had warmed up considerably, close to 80 degrees.  Both of the dogs drank quite a bit each time I put the bowl down.

Once we turned around to head back it became obvious that both dogs were starting to fatigue, neither of them gets to do much extended cardio as evidenced my Sadie’s latest weigh in at the vet, tipping the scales at a hefty 65 pounds. (she was 38 pounds when we adopted her)  The dog’s pace was much slower as we headed back, I found myself bumping into their rear ends repeatedly.

On the way back I actually took pictures of two alligators one of which is the same one that scared the shit out of us. The dogs didn’t notice either gator as they were floating there still as statues.

The dogs were quite glad to make it back into the van, they were so pooped.  I was quite excited to find this little gem right in our backyard.  I know Ali will love going there with the dogs. If you want to see all the picture I took while there, click here.

Later Sunday afternoon I decided to watch Machete once I saw the Giants game was a blow out.  Wow, what a movie.  Machete is pretty much the ultimate man movie and makes no apologies for being over the top silly about it.  The cast of characters for the film is pretty impressive including Steven Segal, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech, Don Johnson, Robert Deniro, Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez.

Despite blood and guts splattering across the screen on a regular basis I found myself laughing out loud repeatedly.   It succeeds in the core function a movie should provide, entertainment, although it definitely will mostly appeal to the male gender.  I’d  give it an A-.  Crack open a six pack and you will enjoy it even more.

I caught a good portion of the Steelers/Broncos game.  Wow what a game.  It looked like the Steelers were going to come back from a big deficit to finally end the Tim Tebow season of miracles.  Instead it was Tebow pulling out yet another miraculous finish, hitting a wide receiver in stride on the first play overtime for a long touchdown.  You really can’t help but pull for the guy.

Last night I decided to embark on what could be maybe another Lost-like experience, adding 24 to my Netflix queue.  They have every season available for streaming.  I know many people were hard core 24 addicts and I just never got involved.  It will be interesting to see if I get hooked in.  So far I like what I see through an episode and a half.

So last night after work I headed back to my mom’s place to do another round of vehicle swaps.  I am going to be doing some additional work on the brakes of her Rav 4, adjusting the rear shoes so the parking brake engages better and bleeding the brakes since mom said they feel soft.

I did plenty of high speed and hard braking testing on the drive back to our house and the Rav 4 passed every time, stopping smoothly and strongly.  Mom also pointed out a weird noise from the back brakes that sounds like a spring extending under tension which I heard as well.  I assume a spring back there is not positioned quite right or it could also go away once I expand the shoes out a bit.

Regardless I am going into it this time feeling much better about things since I now know how the rear brakes are supposed to go back together.  The brake hardware kit came with some new springs that I didn’t utilize, maybe I will pop those on while I am at it.

I will be doing a one man brake bleed which after doing some reading isn’t all that hard to do.  I am hoping the bleeder screws on the Rav 4 are not frozen.

This morning I dropped Ali off at the airport bright and early.  She is heading north to once again celebrate my niece’s birthday.  Since it is also Friday I took the SSR.

When I parked the truck in the parking garage and came around to the passenger side to pull out my gear I noticed a line on the rear quarter panel that I didn’t recall being there.  It almost looked like a body seam.  Well on closer examination my blood pressure immediately shot up a dozen points when I realized it was close to a two foot long scratch! I was so angry.

I go through a lot of effort to keep the SSR sheltered from the inconsiderate idiots, always choosing to park the vehicle in public as far away as possible from other vehicles.  I have to assume that this occurred on New Year’s Eve when went to dinner and a movie.

The scratch is deep.  I am going to hit a portion of it with some Scratch-X to see how effective it is at concealing the blemish.  If that doesn’t work I would probably wind up taking it to the body shop we have had other work on to have it professionally fixed.  There are some other small scratches/chips that could be handled at the same time.

Over this past weekend I forgot to mention I stopped by at the audio installer we used for the Camry years ago to get a quote on putting a new radio in the SSR.  I had already priced out a number of the items I would need for the install.  Well the number I got back was high, $300 higher than the number I saw another SSR fanatic paid to have the same radio installed in his vehicle and close to 50% higher than I was expecting. I was not pleased.  I was less pleased when I saw a sign posted that basically said they only install what they sell, meaning getting the equipment at a discount online and having them install it probably won’t fly.

So I left there feeling like the decision was made for me, I would just be doing the entire installation myself.  I would literally be saving at least 40% by doing so. When I got home I did some more pricing of stuff I would need.  As I was doing that I realized one reason there was a difference between what the other guy paid and what I was quoted.  The other guy had a low end back up camera installed.  I was going with the high end Pioneer model that includes a geeky park assist feature, it is significantly more expensive.

I have been going back and forth in my head about it ever since.  Part of me is hesitant to tackle the job myself.  Yes as a youngster I probably installed a half dozen radios in my old vehicles but this is an entirely different ball of wax with many more moving parts.  It is a radio install, a back up camera install, GPS install that need to be wired in to work with my Bose amplifier and factory steering wheel controls.

I think if I do it myself I will be able to get it all working but part of me feels like the SSR needs to have something like this professionally installed so it turns out as well as possible.  I don’t want anything about the final product to look half assed. So at this point I am really undecided.  I always hate walking away from a “do it yourself and save major $$” opportunity as they normally are a source of personal pride.   I guess I will just keep saving my money for now and pull the trigger in a few weeks one way or the other.

So my bachelor weekend will be busy for sure.  I plan to start my Saturday with a 10 mile group run.  Saturday night I am going to a party for a co-worker whom recently retired.  Machete just arrived in the mail so I would like to watch that sometime as well since it is definitely a Shawn-only type of movie.  Throw in the normal house chores and round two of the Rav 4 work and you have yet another busy weekend on the books. It’s fine though, just sitting around just never will feel comfortable.

As expected the near freezing temps Tuesday night did a number on our landscape once again killing/damaging a ton of things on our property.  The bananas, that have ZERO cold tolerance once again walked the plank.  Of course they will grow back, just in time to get killed again next year.  The poinsettia, which ironically is a symbol of the cold holiday season actually has very poor tolerance of cold weather, they also took a beating.  The big and bushy areca palms also were damaged meaning I will have the unfun job of cutting those back in the future.

Well anyway, after surveying the damage last night I was pissed off.  I am sick and tired of our stuff getting smoked by a freeze each of the last 3 or 4 years (used to not happen at all when we first moved out here)  I went online and bought a 300 foot long by 5 foot wide roll of frost cloth.  That should give us more than enough to cover anything we deem important for years to come.  It didn’t cost that much, it’s something I should have done after the first year of the freeze.

The republican presidential race is a complete and utter joke.  The way almost every candidate has spent time as the “front runner” for a period of a week or two is unlike anything I have ever seen before in something as important as a choice for President.  The fact that Rick Santorum is now taking his turn as one of the favorites just puts an exclamation point on just how whacky this has all become.

Santorum is an evangelical zealot whom was so disliked in his home state of Pennsylvania as an incumbent that he only received 18% of the vote when they kicked his ass out the door.  The last thing we need is another nut job that tells us he makes his decisions based on what God tells him to do.  Both of the Rick’s in this race are utter and total dicks in my opinion.

John Stewart summarizes my feelings in a very funny way here.